Objects

Bernard Zakheim (1898-1985), a Varsovian, learned the craft of sculpting from Stanisław Ostrowski and Henryk Glicenstein during the First World War. After the end of the war, he moved to the United States, settling in San Francisco, California, in 1920. He studied at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute (now the San Francisco Art Institute) and also travelled to France and Italy. Fascinated by monumental painting, he visited Diego Riviera in Mexico. 

During the Great Depression, in the 1930s, the US federal authorities supported artists through dedicated programmes under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Zakheim was one of the many artists who was able to continue his artistic activity thanks to these programmes. His commissions for the WPA included frescoes at the Jewish Community Centre in San Francisco, the Alemany Health Centre (1934) and the University of California Medical Centre (UCSF) (1935–1938). 

The extermination of Jews during the Second World War and the deaths of many family members left an indelible pain in Zakheim's life and work. The theme of the Holocaust recurred repeatedly in his works: in his painted scenes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ("Dachy Warszawy 1943" [Roofs of Warsaw 1943], ŻIH) and in his sculptural compositions. In 1966, he created the composition "Genocid" [Genocide] consisting of six wooden figures, which since the 1980s has been part of the "Warsaw Ghetto Memorial" at the Mount Sinai cemetery in Los Angeles. Dedicated to the memory of the millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, the composition is full of despair but also hope for revival.

After the Second World War, Zakheim visited Poland. During one of his visits, he created a monumental fresco, "Historia Żydów" [History of the Jews], in "Śródborowianka", a holiday resort of the Jewish Social and Cultural Society in Śródborów, near Warsaw.

Renata Piątkowska