Simon Natan Karczmar, Judaica Polish Oil Painting Hasidic Jewish Prayers, Israeli Soldiers Jerusalem, c.1950s

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Israeli Tzahal, IDF Soldiers and Chassidic men praying and dancing at the Kotel, Western Wall in jerusalem israel. Fine oil … Read more Israeli Tzahal, IDF Soldiers and Chassidic men praying and dancing at the Kotel, Western Wall in jerusalem israel. Fine oil painting.
24 x 18 canvas, 32.5 x 27.5 inches with frame.

Simon Natan Karczmar (born November 1, 1903 in Warsaw , died 1982 in Safed ) - Polish and Israeli painter.
He was born as Szmaja Karczmar, he studied at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts. He earned a living by importing fur from Russia, which he sold to a cousin who was a furrier. With time, he gained a lot of experience and became an excellent sorter. In 1929 he left for Paris , where he continued his studies in painting. In 1931 he met Nechuma ( Nadia) from Poland, whom he married. Because it was difficult to support the family out of the sale of paintings, he returned to the sorter's work, and his wife started working at perfume Les Lilas in one of the suburbs of Paris. During the Second World War, the persecution of Jews also affected France, so in 1941 he and his family left for Nice. Shortly thereafter the father of Nechuma was denounced to the Gestapo and murdered by a German militiaman. Nechuma was arrested and transported to Auschwitz , Simon joined the partisans at that time. After the war, Nechuma returned to France and reopened perfume. In 1951, the Karczmarów family decided to emigrate to Israel, Simon and his brother-in-law ran a metallurgical plant, but because of losses they had to shut it down. In 1955 they were invited by a friend to Canada, they lived in Montreal where Simon worked again as a fur sorter. In 1959 he got allergies and had to abandon his previous job, he was depressed due to bad financial situation. Simon Karczmar began to paint in a naive way memories of childhood, thanks to which he managed to give them an authentic character and show those places and times through the eyes of a child. His work received positive reviews, he had an individual exhibition at an art gallery in Montreal. In 1960, together with his wife, he left Canada and left for Mexico, where Simon co-organized the Museum of Film Art. At the Centro Deportivo there was a second individual exhibition of his works, and after that he was invited to exhibit paintings in two other galleries. He also received a job offer in the United States and Canada. In 1962 he went to Israel again, where he settled in the art colony in Safed and studied new painting techniques. Although he left France for Israel most of his work evokes his experiences in Eastern Europe. He traveled many times to New York , where he eagerly spent the winter. He died in Safed when he was 79 years old.

The Portrait in Palestine, The Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem
13 February, 1934 - 25 March, 1934
Artists:
Boris Schatz, Hermann Struck, Jakob Steinhardt, Tadeusz Rychter, Simon Karczmar, Moshe Castel, Avigdor Stematsky, Shmuel Charuvi, Meir Gur Arie, Joseph Budko, Jacob Eisenberg and more.
Simon Karczmar's paintings depict the world of his childhood, depict the everyday life of Polish Jews, their culture, customs, celebrations and holidays. You can see the figures of musicians, traders, buildings of Jewish districts and interiors of their houses. Thanks to the naive technique used, viewers look at the world of the painter's childhood through his eyes. The series of paintings entitled Shtetl depicts paintings remembered by the artist from his grandfather's stay in a small Jewish town near Vilnius In this series of images known collectively as Shtetl, (popularized by Sholem Aleichem, Marc Chagall and Chaim Goldberg) Karczmar draws inspiration from his childhood memories of the vacations he spent at his grandfather's house in Lithuania. The word shtetl is Yiddish for little town and refers to the villages with significant Jewish populations that could once be found throughout Eastern Europe.

The nostalgia of Karczmar's renderings contrasts with the darker views of life for Jews revealed in the photographs by Roman Vishniac and drawings of Ephraim Moshe Lilien. While the photographs in The Vanished World seem to emphasize the deprivation experienced by Jews in the years leading up to World War II, Karczmar depicts similar scenes yet focuses on the sense of community and tradition. His works weep with a classic Eastern European naivety shrouded in dark sad colors See less