14 January 2016
On January 25, 2016, Yad Vashem will be opening a new exhibition at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. The exhibition, "Art from the Holocaust: 100 Works from the Yad Vashem Collection," is its largest-ever presentation of artwork from the Yad Vashem Art Collection outside of Israel and will be featured in three languages: German, English and Hebrew.
The exhibition is a collaborative effort between the Bonn-based Foundation for Art and Culture, the German Historical Museum and Yad Vashem, the World Center for Holocaust Remembrance in Jerusalem. The project was initiated by the German national daily BILD media partner and the Foundation for Art and Culture.
The exhibition, which has been jointly curated by Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg from Yad Vashem and Prof. Dr. Walter Smerling on behalf of the Foundation for Art and Culture, is part of the official events surrounding International Holocaust Remembrance Day and also represents the culmination of events marking 50 years since the establishment of German-Israeli diplomatic relations. The exhibition will be on display from January 26- April 3, 2016.
Chancellor of Germany H.E. Angela Merkel will participate at the Inauguration Ceremony at the German Historical Museum on January 25, 2016 together with Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev, as well as Prof. Dr. Alexander Koch, President of the German Historical Museum and Kai Diekmann, Board Member of the Foundation for Art and Culture & Editor-in-Chief of the BILD.
The exhibition features artwork from 50 artists, all but one of whom were Jewish, 24 of whom were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Despite the appalling conditions in which they found themselves and the daily struggle to survive, the artists overcame the paucity of materials with inventiveness, and through their creativity reasserted their individuality and their will to live. The artworks are classified into different themes such as portraits, transcendence and reality, and range from depictions of the daily atrocities faced in the camps to the evocation of an idyllic counter-reality. In portraying their brethren, the Jewish artists were able to commemorate them for future generations, thus defying the Nazis process of dehumanization and annihilation. Beyond the variety of approaches, the different styles and the multiplicity of themes evoked, all the artworks testify to the power of the human spirit that refused to surrender.
A selection of the artworks featured in the exhibition can be viewed online on Yad Vashem's website.
The exhibition is made possible through the sponsorship of Daimler AG and the Deutsche Bank AG. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition is published by the Wienand Verlag, Cologne.
