A new exhibition celebrating the life and work of Stanislaw Brunstein (1914-1994) has opened at Oaks Lane Reform Synagogue – the community where the renowned Warsaw-born Jewish artist made his home after surviving the Holocaust.
Free and open to all (with booking required for security purposes), it runs until 8 December 2024. Click here to arrange your visit.
For a long time after the Shoah – in which he lost his entire family – Stanislaw did not paint. He only resumed his passion in 1962, creating memories of pre-war Polish Jewish life. He said at the time: “I told myself if I could paint and recreate this society, it would be a way of making certain that no one would forget.”
Stanislaw’s first major exhibition took place at Oaks Lane Reform Synagogue nearly 60 years ago – so it is fitting that his paintings have now returned.
His daughter Denise said: “It is with great pride, pleasure and nostalgia to once more have my father’s paintings shown in our synagogue. To say this exhibition is timely is an understatement. In this difficult and ever-challenging world of rising anti-Jewish hatred, somehow the images of Jewish characters, albeit painted ones, hiding away in our loft, become an irony too hard to stomach.”
Titled ‘To Life! From Memory to Canvas: Celebrating the Life and Work of StanislawBrunstein’, the exhibition is split into three parts.
The Shtetl Room has been signed to give the viewer a full-bodied experience of the vitality of life in pre-war Poland – cramming in as many characters and scenes as possible on the wall.
In contrast, the second, called – Family/Attachment/Separation/Loss, is defined by empty spaces and pictures of people hungry, fearful and mourning. The third – named after the artist himself – is a series of self-portraits and looks at how Stanislaw experimented with different styles and content.
Writing in the last edition of the Essex Jewish News, former Movement for Reform Judaism President and friend of Stanislaw, Rabbi Professor Tony Bayfield said: “The deaths of the six million are an agony far beyond articulation or comprehension. But a major part of my learning has been about the equally unique and inarticulable pain and suffering of the survivors. The suffering of the murdered continues even to the second and third generations. And so does the faithfulness, loyalty and love expressed in the lives of Denise and Lorna, Stanislaw Brunstein’s children, manifesting in this exhibition for which Oaks Lane too should take enormous credit.”
The exhibition has been possible thanks to the support of The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, Oaks Lane Reform Synagogue, Redbridge Museum and a number of passionate volunteers.
