Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
The first full-scale exhibition celebrating what the catalogue rightfully calls "the art, pioneering teaching methods and spirit" of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944) has recently opened at the Jewish Museum. A remarkable Bauhaus artist and art teacher, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis taught children in the Terezin ghetto and concentration camp and was an "innovator, activist, and healer." She produced her early work at the Bauhaus, and designed modernist furniture and textiles in Berlin and Vienna. While living in Prague and the Czech countryside, she created realistic oil paintings and went on to do still-life and portrait pastels in the Terezin ghetto — where she provided emotional support and creative inspiration to hundreds of children. (They were all later deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.)
With such a biography, it is not strange that the artist is known more for her life than her art. But it is not her death in Auschwitz that she should be mainly remembered for, nor even for the hope she lent to children whose art work she inspired when she lived in the Terezin ghetto (the basis of the book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly). It is her work that must be remembered. And the museum retrospect includes over l50 works of drawings, paintings, stage and costume designs, architectural drawings, and original furniture. The exhibition was originally organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and is structured chronologically. Elena Makarova is the exhibition’s guest curator, and Regina Seidman Miller is the international guest project director. The curatorial assistant, Joanna Lindenbaum, coordinated the exhibition.
Amazingly, the artist purposely ignored the horrors of the concentration camp and instead, despite her limited art supplies, used scraps of paper and diluted watercolors to paint landscapes, flowers, street scenes and sketches for theater productions. Rich in its variety, the exhibition shows portraits (such as of Stefan Wolpe), a self-portrait, charcoal and graphite on paper of such different images as thistle and poppies, a pastel of a woman with scarf. Also on display are personal photographs and letters, which document what a Jewish woman artist suffered during a very volatile period of 20th century history. Finally, in conjunction with the main exhibition, there is a special section on the artwork of children in Terezin, whom Dicker-Brandeis mentored.
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis’ work can be seen at the Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Avenue, New York City) from September 10, 2004 to January 16, 2005.
