Chaïm Goldberg Figurative Prints

Artist: Chaim Goldberg, Israeli (1917 - 2004) Title: The Horah Dance Year: Circa 1980 Medium: Lithograph on Arches Paper, signed and numbered in pencil ...

Beautiful poignant lyrical piece. I am not sure if it is a lithograph or an etching with hand painted watercolor. it depicts a beautiful shtetl interior scene. Chaim Goldberg -- bo...

Artist: Chaim Goldberg, Israeli (1917 - 2004) Title: The Horah Dance Year: Circa 1980 Medium: Lithograph on Arches Paper, signed and numbered in pencil ...

Chaim Goldberg (March 20, 1917 – June 26, 2004) was a Polish-Jewish artist, painter, sculptor, and engraver. He is known for being a chronicler of Jewish life in the small Polish village (or Shtetl) where he was born, Kazimierz Dolny in eastern Poland; and as a painter of Holocaust era art, which to the artist was seen as an obligation and art with a sense of profound mission. Chaim Goldberg was born in a wooden clapboard house built by his father, a village cobbler. As a young boy of 6 he gravitated to creating little figurines carved from stones. Later he took up drawing and painting with basic shoemaker paints that he found at his father's workbench. He was the ninth child and the first boy after eight girls. He grew up in a religious home in Kazimierz Dolny. He would observe and draw the beggars and klezmers who frequented his home as guests. His father would encourage their stays by letting it be known that the humble Goldberg home was open for those who could not pay for their night stay at any of the inns. They were surely welcome there. These characters became Chaim's early models. On a crisp day in the fall of 1931, Dr. Saul Silberstein, a student of Sigmund Freud who was doing post doctorate work on his book, Jewish Village Mannerisms came into the Goldberg cobbler workshop to have his shoes repaired. As he waited for his shoes, he noticed the numerous art works that were attached to the wall with shoe nails and inquired who the artist was. Silberstein spent the entire night reviewing the young artist’s work. In the morning they went by foot to Lublin, a distance of 26 miles and Dr. Silberstein obtained the opinions of several respected individuals of the work by Chaim Goldberg. He then got him several small scholarships based on these letters of recommendation. This helped finance his early education at the "Józef Mehoffer School for Fine Arts", in Kraków, from which he graduated in 1934. Dr. Silberstein was able to interest several other wealthy sponsors, such as the honorable Felix Kronstein, a judge, and a newspaper publisher who supported the artist through his graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. At 17, he was the youngest to be admitted and studied under the Rector of the Academy and Professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski, Kowarski, Władysław Skoczylas and Jan Gotard (pl). The beauty of Kazimierz Dolny had long ago been discovered by artists who had flocked there in large numbers over the years. Between the First World War and the Second World War, Kazimierz Dolny became known as an Art Colony as well. Professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski had built a summer studio in the mountains and attracted his students to come down and paint outdoors. many of these artists as well as older ones painted the life they saw and the landscape. Chaim Goldberg became stimulated by this traffic of artists and began to do art as well. When he was discovered he had not attended any school or private lessons. He watched what the other artists did and was encouraged to do the same; set himself up with a home-made easel and paint outdoors. When he was discovered at the age of 14, his collection included landscapes as well as paintings of the vagabond types that frequented his home as guests. Once ensconced in his large studio, Chaim Goldberg began to create large paintings that depicted Jewish life he remembered in his Shtetl of Kazimierz Dolny. During this period, of 1960-1966 he created some of his best known paintings, such as The Wedding (in the collection of the Spertus Museum, Chicago); The Shtetl (in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY);, Simchat Torah (in a private collection, NY); and Don't Forget. Chaim Goldberg began to experiment with new shapes and mediums, such as wood carving and stone chiseling in Israel, in the year 1964. He began with abstract drawings of three-dimensional shapes floating and shooting into space. These darting and frequently marching shapes were influenced by the space race between the United States and Russia. He continued to develop his modernist side, despite his commitment to memorialize the life of the Shtetl. It is a very rate to see this dichotomy between realism and making art for art sake in abstract forms with any artist. He continued this dichotomy throughout the rest of his life by dividing his day into sessions in different parts of his studios. In 1970, after arriving in the United States, his drive to create art-for-art-sake turned to creating drawing, watercolors, oil paintings and sculptures based on his impressions of daily life. His response to the modern dwelling and to the masks people use when communicating with one another began to form a viable collections of an artist's inner thoughts and feelings. He foresaw the demise of the Soviet Union in 1973 and created a series of large drawings that depict the Soviet 'empire' as a clawed monster hanging on by the extreme ends of its fangs to a network of spider web-like formations meant to depict their deceptions and lies. His drawings of the modern ways are a documentation of how the artist felt, and saw in his dreams the errors we humans commit towards one another. They are a great window into the feelings of a modern artist caught in the complicated city dwelling and sees no hope for escape from the noise and pollution. Exhibitions: 1931 - "Polish Landscapes," Group Show, Kazimierz-Dolny, Poland 1934 - Studio Show, Kazmierz-Dolny, Poland 1936 - National Group Show, Warsaw, Poland 1937 - National Group Show, Warsaw, Poland (the artist, his future wife and her family were refugees in Siberia) 1946 - "Poland After World War II" solo show, Shtczechin, Poland 1947 - National Group Show, Warsaw, Poland 1949 - National Group Show, Warsaw, Poland 1950 - National Group Show, Warsaw, Poland 1951 - National Group Show, Warsaw, Poland 1952 - National Group Show, Warsaw, Poland 1965 - One Man Show, Pioneer House, Giv'atayim, Israel 1966 - Retrospective Show, Museum Yad Labanim, Petach Tikvah, Israel (attended by Mrs. Golda Meir - Prime Minister; and Kadish Luz - Speaker of the House (Knesset) 1967 - One Man Show, LYS Gallery, New York 1968 - One Man Show, Theodor Hertzl Institute, New York City, New York 1968 - One Man Show, Mixed Media Art Center, Syracuse, New York 1969 - One Man Show, Paul Kessler Art Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts 1970 - One Man Show, Paul Kessler Art Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts 1971 - Large Retrospective Exhibit at the DeAndries Gallery, St' John's University, Queens, New York 1972 - One Man Show, Mixed Media, Lincoln Mall Art Center, Miami, Florida 1972 - Group Show, Mixed Media, American Congress, Washington, D.C. 1973 - One Man Show, "Chaim Goldberg's Shtetl" (drawings, watercolors, sculptures, oil paintings and line engravings) Smithsonian Institution, Hall of Graphic Arts, Washington, D. C. 1973 - Group Exhibit, "Jewish Motifs and Culture of the 20th Century," Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Germany 1974 - One Man Show, The Avila Art Center, Jewish Synagogue, Caracas, Venezuela 1977 - Group Show with the Texas Society of Sculptors, Houston Public Library, Main Branch, Houston, Texas 1979 - One Man Show, Museum of Printing History, Houston, Texas 1982 - Group Exhibit, "Art of the Twentieth Century - A Revelation," Congregation Beth Israel, Houston, Texas 1985 - Group Exhibit, "Twenty-Sixth Invitational," Longview Museum of Art, Longview, Texas 1994 - Group Exhibit, "Shtetl Life," the Nathan and Faye Hurvitz Collection, the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley, California Goldberg's "Marketplace", a hand-colored litho was on the cover of the exhibit catalog. 1997 - One Man Exhibit, "Chaim Goldberg at 80," Nathan B...