Fragile Images (Balkan Studies Library, 26)

✍ Scribed by Mirjam Rajner

• Publisher: BRILL
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 475
• Edition: Illustrated
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In Fragile Images: Jews and Art in Yugoslavia, 1918-1945, Mirjam Rajner traces the lives and creativity of seven artists of Jewish origin. The artists - Mosa Pijade, Daniel Kabiljo, Adolf Weiller, Bora Baruh, Daniel Ozmo, Ivan Rein and Johanna Lutzer - were characterized by multiple and changeable identities: nationalist and universalist, Zionist and Sephardic, communist and cosmopolitan.

These fluctuating identities found expression in their art, as did their wartime fate as refugees, camp inmates, partisans and survivors. A wealth of newly-discovered images, diaries and letters highlight this little-known aspect of Jewish life and art in Yugoslavia, illuminating a turbulent era that included integration into a newly-founded country, the catastrophe of the Holocaust, and renewal in its aftermath.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Note on Personal Names
Introduction
Part 1 In Search of an Identity: Sephardic, Zionist, Yugoslav
Introduction to Part 1
Chapter 1 From Dorćol to Paris and Back: Moša Pijade’s Self-Portraits
1 Coming of Age in Belgrade
2 Fin-de-siècle Munich
3 The Bohemian Paris
4 Pijade’s Self-Portraits: In Search of an Identity
Chapter 2 Sarajevo’s Multiculturalism: Daniel Kabiljo’s Sephardic Types
1 Between East and West
2 Bosnian Artist or Yugoslav Zionist?
3 Choosing Sides
4 Kabiljo’s Sephardic Types
Chapter 3 A Croatian Zionist: Adolf Weiller between the East European Shtetl and the Lure of Nature
1 Becoming a “Jewish Artist”
2 The Lure of Nature
Part 2 From Avant-Garde to Political Activism
Introduction to Part 2
Chapter 4 Bora Baruh’s Refugees
1 “Four Mahaneh Portraits”
2 The Early Works
3 Paris: A Painter and a Revolutionary
4 Painting Refugees
5 Two Directions: The “Art for Art’s Sake” and the Socially Engaged Art
Chapter 5 Ivan Rein’s Paris: From the Quartier Latin to Camp Vernet
1 Growing Up in an Affluent and Acculturated Jewish-Catholic Family
2 The Croatian School of Painting
3 Rein’s Paris
4 Social Awareness and Political Protest
5 Letters to Cuca: On Being Jewish, Yugoslav, and Universal on the Eve of WWII
Chapter 6 The Ethnic and Universal Avante-Garde: Daniel Ozmo’s Linocuts
1 A Bosnian Sephardic Artist in Belgrade
2 Discussing “Jewish Art” in the 1930’s: Between Racial Traits and Human Values
3 Social Content and Expressionist Form
4 Sarajevo’s Avant-Garde: Collegium Artisticum
Part 3 “We Artists Have to Paint”: Art Created during the War and the Holocaust
Introduction to Part 3
Chapter 7 Bora Baruh in Occupied Belgrade: Images of Jewish and Christian Mourning
1 Bombing of Belgrade and Persecution of the Jews
2 Painting Portraits
3 Refugees on Ruins
Chapter 8 Art in Jasenovac: Daniel Ozmo and the Artists of the Ceramic Workshop
1 The Destruction of Sarajevo’s Jewish Community and Daniel Ozmo’s Arrest
2 The Jasenovac Camp and the Ceramic Workshop
3 Ozmo’s Depictions of Forced Labor
4 Slavko Bril
5 Portraits and Landscapes
6 Ozmo’s End
Chapter 9 Refugee and Artist: Ivan Rein, Johanna Lutzer, and Jewish Cultural Life in Kraljevica
1 Escaping to the Adriatic Coast
2 Being a Refugee in Kraljevica
3 Ivan Rein’s Refugee Art
4 The Kraljevica—Porto Re Camp
5 Ivan Rein’s Drawings Created in the Kraljevica Camp
6 Johanna Lutzer: A Jewish Artist from Vienna
Chapter 10 The Rab Island Camp: From Internment to Freedom
Part 4 Producing Art for Partisans: Creativity between Ideology and Survival
Introduction to Part 4
Chapter 11 Bora Baruh as a Partisan, 1941–1942
Chapter 12 Johanna Lutzer: Jewish Refugees with the Partisans in Croatia
Chapter 13 Postscript: Jewish Artists as National Heroes, Victims of Fascism, and Holocaust Survivors
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index