Ozjasz (Osias) Hofstätter (1905–1994) was a painter, draughtsman and printmaker. In the years 1918–1919, he studied in Frankfurt am Main; years later, he resumed his studies in Zurich (1943–1945) and, from 1946, in Vienna. Before World War II, he lived in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Vienna, working as a trader. After the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich in 1938 (the so-called Anschluss), his parents were arrested; Osias and his siblings managed to escape. He found himself in Belgium, where, in 1938, he married his fiancée Anna Schebestowa. In May 1940, after the German invasion of Belgium, he was interned in the Saint Cyprien camp in France; later, until 1941, he was imprisoned in the camp in Gurs. During his stay in the camps, he made drawings depicting everyday life scenes but, most of all, he portrayed his fellow inmates. These works are held in the collection of the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem and the Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz Museum (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot / Ghetto Fighters House). After escaping from the camp, he was hiding in the south of France, from where he made his way to Switzerland in 1942.
In the years 1948–1957, he lived in Warsaw and collaborated, as a graphic designer, with several magazines, including Nowa Wieś, through which he met Karol Zbrzeźny and Irena Rybczyńska-Holland. In 1957, he and his wife left for Israel.
Few of Hofstätter’s works from before 1939 have survived. In that time, he painted mainly landscapes in warm, clean and harmonised colour palettes (M. Tarnowska, entry in: Polski słownik judaistyczny. Dzieje. Kultura. Religia. Ludzie, vol. 1, Warszawa 2003, p. 606). His post-war oeuvre, in turn, has a deeply spiritual and philosophical character. “The artist searched for the causes of human behaviour and the atrocities of war; he strived to capture and convey the mystery of existence. He created grotesque cycles full of deformed, nude, mostly female figures or fantastic animals, angels, showing relationships between people or their mental states (‘Love’, ‘Indecision’, ‘The Family’). Hofstätter’s art is characterised by elaborate lines, a delicate but expressive stroke, muted colours, figures emerging from a dark background” (M. Tarnowska, op. cit.).
Renata Piątkowska