Chaim Goldberg


Chaim Goldberg was a Polish artist, painter, sculptor, and engraver. He is known for being a chronicler of Jewish life in the small Polish village where he was born, Kazimierz Dolny in eastern Poland; and as a painter of Holocaust-era art, which to the artist was seen as an obligation and art with a sense of profound mission.
Following World War II he emigrated to Israel and in 1967 to the United States,. He died in Boca Raton, FL in 2004.

Early life

Chaim Goldberg was born in a wooden clapboard house built by his father, a village cobbler. As a young boy of 6 he gravitated to creating little figurines carved from stones. Later he took up drawing and painting with basic shoemaker paints that he found at his father's workbench. He was the ninth child and the first boy after eight girls. He grew up in a religious home in Kazimierz Dolny. He would observe and draw the beggars and klezmers who frequented his home as guests. His father would encourage their stays by letting it be known that the humble Goldberg home was open for those who could not pay for their night stay at any of the inns. They were surely welcome there. These characters became Chaim's early models.

Discovery & The Artist's First Shtetl period

On a crisp day in the fall of 1931, Dr. Saul Silberstein, a student of Sigmund Freud who was doing post doctorate work on his book, Jewish Village Mannerisms came into the Goldberg cobbler workshop to have his shoes repaired. As he waited for his shoes, he noticed the numerous art works that were attached to the wall with shoe nails and inquired who the artist was. Silberstein spent the entire night reviewing the young artist’s work. In the morning they went by foot to Lublin, a distance of 26 miles and Dr. Silberstein obtained the opinions of several respected individuals of the work by Chaim Goldberg. He then got him several small scholarships based on these letters of recommendation. This helped finance his early education at the "Józef Mehoffer School for Fine Arts", in Kraków, from which he graduated in 1934. Dr. Silberstein was able to interest several other wealthy sponsors, such as the honorable Felix Kronstein, a judge, and a newspaper publisher who supported the artist through his graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. At 17, he was the youngest to be admitted and studied under the Rector of the Academy and Professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski, Kowarski, Władysław Skoczylas and.
The beauty of Kazimierz Dolny had long ago been discovered by artists who had flocked there in large numbers over the years. Between the First World War and the Second World War, Kazimierz Dolny became known as an Art Colony as well. Professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski had built a summer studio in the mountains and attracted his students to come down and paint outdoors. many of these artists as well as older ones painted the life they saw and the landscape.
Chaim Goldberg became stimulated by this traffic of artists and began to do art as well. When he was discovered he had not attended any school or private lessons. He watched what the other artists did and was encouraged to do the same; set himself up with a home-made easel and paint outdoors. When he was discovered at the age of 14, his collection included landscapes as well as paintings of the vagabond types that frequented his home as guests.

The War Years 1939-1945

Chaim was conscripted into the Polish army in the fall of 1938. He was assigned to the artillery brigade that guarded Warsaw. After the Polish army surrendered to the Germans he was taken into custody as a POW and held in a labor camp. He managed to escape and tried to rescue his parents and family who would not believe that the Germans had any intention of hurting the Jews. He could not motivate them to flee with him. So Chaim, his future wife, her sister and their parents became exiles escaping to Russia on foot. They kept moving north as the German armies advanced and ended up in Novosibirsk. Chaim married Rachel on April 15, 1944. They were able to return to Poland in 1946.

Emigration

Chaim Goldberg received a fellowship from the Polish Ministry of Culture to study at the Ecole de beaux Arts in Paris and in 1949 they returned to Poland. He worked on various commissions for the Polish Government and in 1955 made an application to be allowed to immigrate to Israel.
The Goldberg family arrived in Israel in 1955 and began a new life. They stayed in Israel until 1967 where Chaim exhibited and sold his work to American, Canadian tourists and Israeli collectors. Despite that Safed was the art colony of record, Chaim Goldberg's presence in northern Tel Aviv became a well known bit of art trivia to almost everyone and his studio drew from the wealthier tourists who frequented Hotel Ramat Aviv.

The Artist's Second Shtetl Period

Once ensconced in his large studio, Chaim Goldberg began to create large paintings that depicted Jewish life he remembered in his Shtetl of Kazimierz Dolny. During this period, of 1960-1966 he created some of his best known paintings, such as The Wedding ; The Shtetl ;, Simchat Torah ; and Don't Forget.

Modernism

Chaim Goldberg began to experiment with new shapes and mediums, such as wood carving and stone chiseling in Israel, in the year 1964. He began with abstract drawings of three-dimensional shapes floating and shooting into space. These darting and frequently marching shapes were influenced by the space race between the United States and Russia. He continued to develop his modernist side, despite his commitment to memorializing the life of the Shtetl. It is a very rate to see this dichotomy between realism and making art for art sake in abstract forms with any artist. He continued this dichotomy throughout the rest of his life by dividing his day into sessions in different parts of his studios.
In 1970, after arriving in the United States, his drive to create art-for-art-sake turned to create drawings, watercolors, oil paintings and sculptures based on his impressions of daily life. His response to the modern dwelling and to the masks people use when communicating with one another began to form a viable collection of an artist's inner thoughts and feelings.
He foresaw the demise of the Soviet Union in 1973 and created a series of large drawings that depict the Soviet 'empire' as a clawed monster hanging on by the extreme ends of its fangs to a network of spiderweb-like formations meant to depict their deceptions and lies. His drawings of the modern ways are a documentation of the artist's feelings. He saw in his dreams the errors we humans commit towards one another. They are a great window into the feelings of a modern artist caught in the complicated city dwelling and seeing no hope for escape from the noise and pollution.

Sculptures

Chaim Goldberg's insatiable desire to create art in many mediums knew no end. He engraved and sculpted in wood, stone, and metal. Here we see a 9 1/2 foot tall carving from oak, titled WE. He would stain his sculptures in various tones and have editions of 8 bronzes cast of each one he chose for editioning. His main advisor was his wife of 65 years, Rachel.
, Spring of 1995.
sculpture workshop. A few large carvings are seen in process.

The United States

In 1967, Goldberg arrived in the United States, with a two-year business visa on an exhibition-tour and continued to paint, and create line engravings of his village characters, as well as sculpt. His and subject matter widened while living in New York which became one of his "themes." He and his family decided to become citizens of the United States in 1973.
I. B. Singer wrote in an introduction to an exhibit catalog "Chaim Goldberg came from the shtetl and remembers its every detail. He is never abstract but is true to the objects and their divine order. His work is enriching Jewish art and the image of our tradition."

Influences

Goldberg's "Culture Shock" series and other series based on real life and politics of the period as were the works of the series the "Mad Drivers." Some of his work dealt with his own dream sequences, such as the "Violin Thief Sequence" and the "Bird Dream Sequence."
In 1974, Chaim attended a performance of the "Emmett Kelly, Jr. Circus" and began a series of drawings and other works on paper inspired by the "Circus theme." Then dance took center stage as his main subject. He also carved in wood. His body of work on the dance theme included paintings, watercolors, and sculpture carved in wood or made of aggregate concrete. Goldberg continued line engraving and created a suite of engravings titled, "Spring".
Spring 1Spring 2Spring 2Spring 3Spring 4Spring 5
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Holocaust theme

In 1944 while in exile in Russia, Goldberg began making an effort to document what he heard. He returned to Poland with his wife and son, Victor, and began to create over 150 works of art dealing with the Holocaust, many of which are in the permanent collection of several museums, namely the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.

Third Shtetl Period

In 1987, while working on the Holocaust theme, Goldberg returned to painting his beloved Kazimierz Dolny and the Jewish life in the village. This time his paintings were less lyrical and surreal, and instead were more 'story-telling' and documentary. After completing some fifty large canvases in 1997, at the age of 80, he was diagnosed with a disabling illness. He died on June 26, 2004 in Boca Raton, Florida.

Exhibitions


  1. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20th Century Permanent Art Collection, New York City, New York
  2. Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York
  3. Beit HaNassi, Jerusalem, Israel
  4. Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
  5. Jerusalem Municipality, Jerusalem, Israel
  6. Museum Yad Labanim, Petach Tikvah, Israel
  7. Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva, Switzerland
  8. National Museum, Warsaw, Poland
  9. Jewish Museum, Warsaw, Poland
  10. Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Germany
  11. National Gallery of Art, Lessing Rosenwald Collection Washington, D.C.
  12. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  13. Smithsonian Institution, American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery Collection, Washington, D.C.
  14. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  15. Lowe Art Museum, Miami, Florida
  16. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
  17. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
  18. Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
  19. Public Library Art Collection, San Francisco, California
  20. New York Public Library, New York City, New York
  21. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
  22. Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, Massachusetts
  23. Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas
  24. Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas
  25. Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, Chicago, Illinois
  26. Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, California
  27. Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, California
  28. Yeshiva University Museum, New York City, New York
  29. YIVO, New York City, New York
  30. Jewish Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio
  31. Derfner Judaica Museum, in the Jacob Reingold Pavilion, Riverdale, NY
  32. Muzeum Nadwiślański, Kazimierz Dolny, Poland

    List of Kazimierz-Dolny artists

The artists who frequented the Kazimierz-Dolny Art Colony were many, some of the Jewish artists were:
  1. Maurycy Applebaum
  2. Eugeniusz Act
  3. Jozef Badower
  4. Henryk Barcinski
  5. Adolph Behrman
  6. Henryk Berlewi
  7. Salomon Bialogorski
  8. Arnold Blaufuks
  9. Sasza Blonder
  10. Icchak Wincenty Brauner
  11. Aniela Cukier
  12. Bencion Cukierman
  13. Samuel Cygler
  14. Herszel Cyna
  15. Henryk Cytryn
  16. Jakub Cytryn
  17. Rachel Diament
  18. Boas Dulman
  19. Samuel Finkelstein
  20. Abraham Frydman
  21. Feliks Frydman
  22. Jozef Mojzesz Gabowicz
  23. Izydor Goldhuber-Czaj
  24. Dawid Grieffenberg
  25. Michal Grusz
  26. Izaak Grycendler
  27. Chaim Hanft
  28. Adam Herszaft
  29. Elzbieta Hirszberzanka
  30. Ignacy Hirszfang
  31. Gizela Hufnagel
  32. Marcin Kitz
  33. Natan Korzen
  34. Jozef Kowner
  35. Szymon Kratka
  36. Izaak Krzeczanowski
  37. Chaim Lajzer
  38. Natalia Landau
  39. Henryk Lewensztadt
  40. Mary Litauer
  41. Jozef Majzels
  42. Arieh Merzer
  43. Stella Amelia Miller
  44. Maurycy Minkowski
  45. Abraham Neuman
  46. Szlomo Nussbaum
  47. Abraham Ostrzega
  48. Samuel Puterman
  49. Henryk Rabinowicz
  50. Stanislawa Reicher
  51. Bernard Rolnicki
  52. Roman Rozental
  53. Mojzesz Rynecki
  54. The Seidenbeutel brothers:
  55. # Efraiim Seidenbeutel
  56. # Jozef Seidenbeutel
  57. # Menashe Seidenbeutel
  58. Efraiim & Gela Seksztajn
  59. Marcelli Slodki
  60. Arieh Sperski
  61. Marek Szapiro
  62. Natan Spigel
  63. Jozef Tom
  64. Feliks Topolski
  65. Symcha Trachtner
  66. Maurycy Trębacz
  67. Tadeusz Trebacz
  68. Izrael Tykocinski
  69. Jakub Weinles
  70. Wladyslaw Weintraub
  71. Israel Szmuel Wodnicki
  72. Pinkus Zelman
  73. Izaak Zajdler
  74. Leon Zysberg
  75. Fiszel Zylberberg.

    Catalogues Raisonné Series

Vol. #1 - Chaim Goldberg’s Shtetl: The Drawings, series name: The Complete Works of Chaim Goldberg, by Shalom Goldberg, Bayglow Press, January 2015,
Vol. #9 - Chaim Goldberg’s Dance, series name: The Complete Works of Chaim Goldberg, by Shalom Goldberg, Bayglow Press, January 2015
Vol. #10 - Chaim Goldberg’s Israeli Landscapes, series name: The Complete Works of Chaim Goldberg, by Shalom Goldberg, Bayglow Press, December 2014,
Vol. #11 - Chaim Goldberg’s American Landscapes and Florals, series name: The Complete Works of Chaim Goldberg, by Shalom Goldberg, Bayglow Press, December 2014,

Illustrated Books

Included in each portfolio set are the following works:
  1. Dreamer - Line Engraving
  2. To the Unknown - Intaglio
  3. The Blacksmith - Intaglio
  4. Moving Day - Intaglio
  5. Two Hasidic Dancers - Etching
  6. Seven Hasidic Dancers - Etching
  7. The Cheder - Intaglio
  8. Duet - Intaglio
  9. Purim - Intaglio
  10. The Hora - Intaglio