Irene Awret

Girl with Rooster, Enamel Glazed Ceramic Plaque

This is a rare ceramic plaque painted with enamel glaze by famed Israeli German artist Irene Awret (these are generally hand signed Awret Safed on the verso. I just have not opened the frame to check) the actual glazed ceramic is 10.25 X 14.75 inches. It depicts a girl or woman with potted plants, birds, pomegranates and other fruits and flowers in a naif, folk art style. Irène Awret was born to a Jewish family in Berlin called Spicker, the youngest of three children. Her mother died in 1927, when Irène was six years old. In 1937 she was forced to stop high school, due to the Nazi race laws. Because she could not continue her regular studies, her father sent her to study drawing, painting and art restoration with a Jewish painter. Among his students were a large number of German Jews who knew they would have to leave Germany within a short time and would require a profession to enable them to support themselves. When the situation grew worse, following the Kristallnacht (the first major attack on German and Austrian Jews in November 1938), her uncle decided to move to Belgium. In 1939 the situation became even worse - her father was fired from his job and the family were forced to leave their home. As a result, Awret's father tried to send her and her sister to Belgium, with the help of smugglers. The first smuggler proved to be a double agent and they were sent back from Aachen to Berlin. Two weeks later they made a second, successful, attempt to sneak across the border. Awret worked for a Dutch Jewish family as a maid. As she had her room and board there, she was able to save enough money to study art part-time at Brussels' Académie Royal des Beaux-Arts. A few months later Awret's father joined her and her financial situation became easier. She left her job and studied full-time, helping support herself with restoration work when it was available and by painting portraits to order. Later, Awret found a hiding place on a farm in Waterloo with a Jewish family who were connected with the underground. In January 1943 she had to return to Brussels, living with a false identity card which stated she was a married woman with two children. Awret succeeded in renting an attic without informing the police where she was - she told her landlady that she had been forced to flee her husband because he beat her. While there, she supported herself by restoring wooden sculptures. A Jewish informer gave her up to the Gestapo, accompanying the two Gestapo men who arrested her. Awret was able to take a bag containing food and drawing materials. She was detained in the Gestapo cellars in Brussels where she drew. Because there was nothing there to draw, she sketched her own hand (view this work). Awret was interrogated in order to reveal the hiding place of her father who was still in Brussels. The National Socialist regime was determined to persecute him, even though he had fought for Germany in World War I and been permanently disabled. They stepped up their torture and brought Awret before Hartmann, the head of the Gestapo in Brussels. When Hartmann saw her block of drawings, he asked her where she had studied art and halted the interrogation. Awret was placed in a narrow cell and then transferred to Malines camp, which the Belgian's called Mechelen. Malines was a transit camp to Auschwitz, regularly sending 2000 people at a time. Although she arrived just before Transport No. 20, Irène Awret avoided being included. Instead she was put to work in the leather workshop, decorating broaches. While she was there, Hartmann visited the camp and spotted her: "I could have discovered where your father is hiding," he told her. When her artistic talents became known, she was transferred to the Mahlerstube (artist's workshop) where she worked producing graphics for the Germans until the end of the war. When Carol (Karel) Deutsch (whose works are now on view at Yad Vashem) was sent from Mechelen to his death with his wife, he left young Irene his paintbox. Irene also recalls seeing the great painter Felix Nussbaum and his wife being pushed into a boxcar bound for the gas, and tells of the aftermath of the famous 20th Train incident, when a young Jewish doctor armed only with a pistol and helped by two unarmed friends with a lantern ambushed one of Mechelen's Auschwitz-bound trains carrying 1,618 Jews, most of whom had fled Eastern Europe for Belgium. Awret's job enabled her to paint and draw - mainly in pencil, but also in watercolors and oils. In the artists' workshop she met a Jewish refugee from Poland - Azriel Awret - who would later become her husband. Among the other artists in the workshop were Herbert von Ledermann-Vütemberg, a sculptor from an aristocratic family with Jewish roots, Léon Landau, and Smilowitz, who perished in the camps in the East. Irène and Azriel tried to bribe a German officer to prevent Smilowitz's deportation. Not only were they unsuccessful, but they were almost put onto the same train. Jacques Ochs was another artist with whom they became friends in the camp. Ochs, a French-born Protestant who lived in Belgium, was interned as a political prisoner. He remained in Belgium after liberation. After the war the Awrets immigrated to Israel and made their home in Safed. They continued to work, and were instrumental in founding Safed's artists' quarter. The Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (Ghetto Fighters' House Museum) art collection holds works donated by Awret. These date from her time in Malines camp and from her stay in Brussels after the war, when she was in the company of orphans who had hidden while their parents were sent to Auschwitz. Her highly expressive works have made their way to exhibitions at theTel Aviv Museum, the Haifa Museum of Modern Art and the Modern Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., as well as into the private collections of such individuals as Dr. Jonas Salk...

Signed on recto and signed verso, titled, and inscribed Montmartre by the artist. This is a large colorful expressionist painting of a girl doll with long blonde or ginger redhead pigtails. It is titled Poupee 1925 and depicts an Art Deco era flapper girl in a beret. Roger Crusat (French Expressionist artist, poet and lithographer) is known for ballet troupe set design and theatre backdrop painting and architectural motifs. Roger Crusat was born in 1917 in Roussillon, Provence, France. Crusat's early works depict the colorful countryside of Provence in the South of France, As a young man Crusat performed many jobs in the troupe, designing costumes, and even dancing. But, most important, he painted the scenery for the troupe's performances. It was while working in this capacity that he learned the essentials of scenery painting that remain evident in his mature work. Crusat was a student of Andre Fons-Godail at Beaux-Arts in Perpignan when he was called to serve in World War II. After being wounded in 1940, he returned to study under Rene Jaudon at Beaux-Arts in Paris. Crusat was known by his contemporaries as "the Catalan painter of Montmartre" where he lived with his wife until his death in 1994. Cracked and peeling walls framed by rusting water pipes are a common sight in Montmartre. What others considered unnecessary, Crusat included. Water pipes were his cherished motif. Supposed by some to be a symbol of decay and monotony, Crusat's Impressionist water pipes like arteries in the body, convey life. Crusat won the prestigious Prix Populiste for his "Descente d'Eau" (Water Pipes) in 1956. Crusat's mature work retains the essentials of good scenery painting. Intricate detail will not be found, but broad, solid abstract shapes abound. His subtle colors, dense in texture, are meant to compliment his subjects, not distract from them. The critics considered him a lyric expressionist and a "painter of Man" in his portrayal of the anguish of daily life and the regrets of the past. Crusat exhibited at many of the same Salons as the post-impressionists and expressionists. Salon des Independants was co-founded by Georges Seurat. Degas had only one exhibition during his lifetime, and it was at the Galerie Durand Ruel in Paris. Gauguin had also exhibited his Tahitian paintings. Crusat's works were exhibited there in 1955. SELECT AWARDS 1954 Le Prix de la Jeune Peintre 1955 Prix des Amateurs d'Art & des Collectionneurs, Galerie Gazette des Beaux Arts, 140 rue Faubourg St. Honore, Paris Les Jardins des Abbesses purchased by the Republic of France, Prix de la Ville de Marseilles, Prix Othon Friesz 1956 Prix Populiste, Prix de Amedeo Modigliani 1957 Grand Prix International de Vichy, Prix de la Fondation Greenshields 1959 IVeme Grand Prix de Peinture du Festival de Vichy 1967 Le Prix des Amis de Brantôme, Perigord, France 1970 Prix de la Critique Academy de Vernet a Vichy,"La Nuit, Premiere Etude" Roger Crusat, Half-closed shutters , poems enriched with four original lithographs (175 numbered copies) drawn on Henri Deprest's presses on February 13, 1975 , Éditions Matignon 34, 1975. Personal exhibitions Durand-Ruel Gallery, Paris, 1955 [ 1 ] . Galerie Rivière, Paris, november 1958 [ 4 ] . Le Roux and Mathias, auctioneers in Paris, Sale of the Roger Crusat workshop , Hôtel Drouot , Paris, Thursday October 27, 1994 [ 5 ] . Jack's American Bistro, Glens Falls , September- october 2004 [ 6 ] . Collective exhibitions Galerie Roger, Lyon , October 1946 [ 7 ] . Salon des Indépendants , Paris, from 1952 [ 8 ] . Exhibition Discover , Galerie Charpentier , Paris, 1955. Populist Salon, Paris, 1956. Salon des Amis de Brantôme, 1957. Hundred painters and oil - Exhibition on the occasion of the centenary of the first oil drilling , Musée Galliera , october 1958 [ 9 ] . “An artist from Roussillon whose invoice calls for a flattering comparison with that of a Soutine or a Rebeyrolle . Indeed, following their example, he focuses on familiar scenes: Girls on the balcony or in the basket , Laundresses weighing heavily on the iron, draft horses or plucked turkeys, who stand next to a magnificent portrait of a man in a red dressing gown . Hasn't the Prix Populiste already crowned its merits? " - Jean Jacquinot SELECT EXHIBITIONS Galerie La Gentilhommiere, Paris La Salle Arago, Perpignan, Salon des Indépendants, Salon d'Automne Biennale de Menton, Menton Galerie des Jacobins, Lyon Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris Salon de la Nationale Galerie Bassano, Paris Salon Populiste Salon de Romans Galerie Motte, Geneva, Switzerland Exposition à Quiberville sur Mer - Normandie Galerie Charpentier Salon Confrontation: Bernard Buffet, Roger Crusat, Jean Jansem, Franck Innocent...

Jean Vinay was a self-taught artist though he received artistic guidance from Albert Marquet, the Fauvist, who he knew through his travels in French North Africa. Jean Viney...

This is a small oil painting on on panel. A Rabbi at a Farbrengen 15.5 X 14.5 with frame. 6.5 X 5.5 painting alone Zwy Milshtein (Zvi Tzvi Milstein) BIOGRAPHY 1934 Born in Kishinev...