Objects

Jonasz Stern’s painting “Night” (1974) is a one of the assemblages, which the artist created from the mid-1960s onwards. In it, he used organic remains: animal bones, fishbones, bird feathers, fish skins, dried plant fragments, pieces of fabric and nets. Stern not only searched for materials for these paintings, but also personally prepared the bones and skins, which he glued to the surface of the canvas or panels with transparent glue. He constructed decorative, symmetrical arrangements, often with lace-like precision in shape, as seen in the painting “Night”.

He covered the surface with a uniform layer of paint. The background colour in the painting, sharp and aggressive, almost monochromatic, in dark shades of blue, plays an important role. It emphasises the blackness of the bones and remains. The rough surface contrasts with the glossy, tar-like black of the bones. Stern’s “Night”, enclosed in a display case, separated from the viewer by a glass pane, creates a single, distinct circle of death and salvation.

“In my works, I save them from being forgotten and destroyed”, said the artist. “I extend the life of what once existed. I prolong its existence in the form of a painting.” (“Jonasz Stern”, Sztuka, 1987, No. 5, p. 2).

Stern’s works, a man who miraculously survived the Holocaust, do not speak directly. They metaphorically evoke biological and ontological aspects of human and natural life, the unity of humans with the biological world of animals and plants. In his works, the eternal cycle of life and death, the rhythm of passing and rebirth, reappears. This unchanging, recurring and accepted order of birth and death is violently interrupted when man intervenes.

“For me, art is always a manifestation of our existence”, said Stern (M. A. Potocka, Ostatni wywiad z Jonaszem Sternem [The Last Interview with Jonasz Stern], Odra, 1988, No. 11 (326), p. 33). The painting “Night” is confirmation of this.

Renata Piątkowska