Objects

Weiss, then already a recognized painter, professor (and, repeatedly, rector) of the Academy of Fine Arts, spent the Second World War in Krakow. German officers moved into the artist’s house. He himself used at this time a small studio in the building of the Academy of Fine Arts, from the window of which he would paint the Planty Park, the Barbican, and St Florian’s Gate. Fortunately, his wife, Aneri, Irena Weiss née Silberberg (1888–1981), survived the Holocaust. After the liberation, the artist was free to walk around his city again to draw Wawel and the Vistula River.

That was when he created this small sketch: "Walls of the ghetto Krakow – Podgórze – Krzemionki 1945" (the pencil inscription on the back of the drawing was added by the artist’s wife). The black crayon outlining the characteristic ghetto wall, made to resemble the matzevot from a cemetery, highlights the recent tragedy of the extermination of the entire Jewish community of Krakow. This drawing is a document of the emptiness after the Holocaust, a sign of remembrance of the murdered Jews of Krakow.

Renata Piątkowska