Innovator, Activist,
Healer: The Art of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
The
Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue (northeast corner of 92nd Street)
New York NY 10128
September 10, 2004 - January
16, 2005
By ARDYN
HALTER
Watercolor on paper
by Hana Mirjam Kohn (1931-1944)
This and all images coutesy The Jewish Museum
On the morning of
October 6th 1944 a transport of cattle cars set off on the tracks from
Terezin to Auschwitz. It contained mostly women and children. Few of
those children survived. Together with them on the transport was their
art teacher in the Nazi camp Theresienstadt, (Terezin) a woman they
loved who had encouraged them there to paint, design and perform plays,
seeking the creative within each of them. Like Janusz Korczak, Freidl
Dicker-Brandeis joined the children on what for most was to be their
final journey. She insisted on volunteering that day, incapable of facing
continued separation from her husband Pavel, her first cousin, who three
weeks earlier had been taken. He was to survive. At her death she was
46.
Days before leaving
Terezin, Frield-Dicker-Brandeis hid two suitcases containing the children's
drawings, These came to light in the 1960s and were published in the
book I never saw another butterfly. Several of these drawings are shown
at the end of the exhibition in The Jewish Museum. At this point I would
like to make a personal digression. When almost twenty years ago my
father (Roman Halter) and I worked on Yad Layeled the memorial in the
Ghetto Fighter's Museum in Israel to the one and a half million Jewish
children who were murdered during the Shoah, we selected some of these
drawings and paintings and made from them stained glass windows. It
was our intention to create a visual link between the children of Terezin
and those children and adults visiting the children's memorial today.
An abstract concept would not communicate to generations whereas the
drawings made by those children can speak to each of us. We wished to
emphasise the creativity of the lives that were lost rather than the
murderous ways in which those lives were taken.
Atelier Singer-Dicker
Perspective view of the lobby of Villa Heriot 1932
pencil and tempera on paper
Private Collection
At that time we
were but partially aware of the range and sheer creative vitality of
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. The exhibition at The Jewish Museum, New York
will run through to January 16th 2005 and serves to remind us not only
of her energy and, even more, of the of the dynamic spirit of discovery
shared by those within the Bauhaus school. Above all the exhibition
permits insight into the life of one of the most human, caring and creative
women of the twentieth century.
Intensely stimulated by the newly-formed Bauhaus in 1919, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
explored every available medium, studying under Gropius, Klee, Muche,
Klemmer, Kandinsky and Itten. If Itten and Klee was the teachers to
whom she felt closest in spirit, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was also drawn
to ground her designs in a working understanding of practical techniques:
woodwork; metal work; bookbinding; printing and typography; weaving.
The exhibition and catalogue Frield Dicker-Brandeis; Vienna 1898-Auschwitz
1944 text Ellen Makarova, coordinated by Regina Seidman-Miller beside
providing marvellous examples of her studies during her Bauhaus period
also cover the most exciting period of her work when she teamed up with
her lover Fanz Singer to form the Aterlier Singer-Dicker. Their work
was much in demand in Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Berlin and ranged
from stackable chairs, modular furniture, to interior design, a tennis
club house, a Montessori school including the design of the toys.
This exhibition demonstrates a wide range of her paintings and drawings.
Some deserve particular comment: "Sleeping Cat," (circa 1924),
charcoal on paper with what might be an intentional or unintentional
coffee stain that works on her delicate Foujita-like charcoal as essentially
as the umber ground of a Lascaux cave-painting of a bison. (the drawing
was discarded by Friedl but salvaged from the waste-basket bya fellow
student). Or her from "View of the Moldau by Vysehrad," (1934-6)
, a playful and delicate pastel and watercolour (mislabelled in the
catalogue as an oil painting), whose delicacy fuses the childlike and
the sophisticated. View from a window in "Franzensbad," (1936-7)
- a stylistic precursor of RB Kitaj's "If Not, Not," (1976.)
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
Self-Portrait in Car 1940
pastel on paper
Jewish Museum, Prague
"Self Portrait
in a Car," (1940) shows her in a carriage or train, the vehicle
is not certain, the perspective gives thepciture a sense of accelerated
motion and her face is pared down to a few minimal marks, smudges in
pastel as though in some premonitory way she sees herself moving towards
her end.
As an artist, Frield's
sheer leger d'esprit came most fully to the fore when designing and
thinking on paper. The designs for the apartment of Dr. Reisner are
in themselves masterpieces of late-Cubism, in particular the ground-plan
for the bedroom combining the boldness of Juan Gris, the poised structure
of Piet Mondrian and delicacy of Paul Klee. In these works, more than
any others, the energy, excitement of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was best
expressed. Her work communicates a zest for people. She is evidently
happiest working in partnership with others or within the milieu of
a school as student or teacher, or within her design partnership with
Franz Singer. The Singer-Dicker practice flourished during the late
1920's and their designs today still look modern and vital. And whilst
at the height of her success as a designer, with an active client-base
from Viennese Jewish bourgeoisie she added to her overloaded schedule
the role of a kindergarten teacher.
This exhibition is as much a time chart of two decades of central European
aesthetics as an insight into the life of a gifted individual, respected
and loved by her contemporaries and by the children she taught. It is
an enriching and painful experience.
Ardyn
Halter is a painter and a writer who divides his time between London
and Israel. Recent work is currently on exhibition at The Gallery In
The Sky, 44 West 28th Street, New York, (with fellow Israeli painter
Michael Kovner) and includes screenprints from The
Water's Edge, a print and poetry portfolio
on permanent exhibition at The British Library and also in the collection
of The New York Public Library. In April 2004 he installed a pair of
commissioned stained-glass windows in Kigale, Rwanda to mark the tenth
anniversary of the genocide there.
