To Overcome the Disaster and to Look Forward.
A Solo Exhibition of Zeev Kun (1930–2024), Recipient of the 2023 Moshe Castel Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Israeli Art
December 4, 2024 – January 8, 2025
A Look into the Future
In Search of Lost Time
A Lonely Woman at an Abandoned House
Lock near the House
Flowers in Safed
In the Room by the Window
A Lonely Orange
Abandoned Building
An Unfinished Notebook
Eternal Flowers
Two Pomegranates by an Abandoned Building
A City from the Past
The outstanding painter Zeev Kun, who passed away in Tel Aviv on June 20, 2024, was one of Israel’s most important artists. Together with Samuel Bak, who has won international acclaim, and Anatol Gurewitsch (1916–2005), Kun was one of the founders of the Surrealist school developed by artists who were Holocaust survivors. Their lives were forever stamped by the horrors they had endured, even though they were supposedly rehabilitated: marrying, divorcing, remarrying, fathering children, and leading a lifestyle that may occasionally seem downright bohemian. Yet, deep inside they were still dominated by the ghettoes and extermination camps, and haunted by the memories of those who had perished in that hell. The Jewish painters who were Holocaust survivors, both those who had subsequently moved to Israel and those who lived in the Diaspora, pursued different artistic strategies: Some tried to leave the past behind and make a clean break, avoiding any references to their experiences from the first half of the 1940s in their works (e.g., Yehuda Rodan, 1916–1996, who is known for his landscapes of Tel Aviv, vistas of Safed, and bouquets of flowers), while others turned their trauma into a key theme of their art; whenever they painted something, no matter what, they were actually depicting the reality and characters from their days in the camps (e.g., Osias Hofstätter, 1905–1994). Samuel Bak, Anatol Gurewitsch, and Zeev Kun forged a different path in Israeli and global art: In their paintings, which are remarkable for their impeccable pictorial technique, there is no real separation between the world of the living and that of the dead; those who are no longer with us still seem to walk among us, and their former possessions continue to lead lives of their own, even when there is no one around to make use of them. The real world and the fictional world of memory are interlaced and interwoven, with no way of disentangling them or neutralizing their mutual influence. Over sixty years, Zeev Kun created hundreds of works in this style, and they are instantly recognizable as his, even when unsigned. This body of work is Kun's unique contribution to the depiction of the Holocaust in the visual arts.
Zeev (Laszlo) Kun was born on April 16, 1930, in the city of Nyíregyháza in northeastern Hungary. His parents, Blanka and Sandor, owned an art supply store, where Zeev worked as a bellboy from the age of twelve. As a teenager, he dreamed of becoming a painter, but the horrific tragic events that were raging in Europe at the time did not take his dreams and aspirations into account. In March and April 1944, the deportation of the Hungarian Jews began, and Zeev, who was only fourteen at the time, was sent first to Auschwitz, and then to the Jaworzno concentration camp, 23 kilometers from Auschwitz. Then, from January to April 1945, he was imprisoned at the concentration camps of Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and Flossenbürg. On April 23, 1945, the latter camp was liberated by the 97th Artillery Division of the US army, who found more than fifteen hundred half-starved and weakened prisoners there; one of them was Zeev Kun, who had just turned fifteen. In late August, 1945, he managed to return to Hungary, where he learned that, out of the eight thousand Jews of Nyíregyháza, only several hundred had survived the Holocaust. Zeev Kun recalls that only three out of his twenty-eight classmates survived World War II and the Holocaust.
As incredible as it may seem, with a concentration camp tattoo still visible on his arm, Zeev Kun went back to school. After graduation, in the fall of 1947 he entered the Budapest Art Academy, where he studied for over two and a half years. As the new pro-Communist political regime in Hungary was growing increasingly repressive, all of his family’s property was nationalized. In 1949 Zeev Kun joined a group of some thirty Jews from the Zionist organization “Ha’shomer Ha’tzair,” who managed to secretly cross the Czech border. From there, they moved to Austria, and later to Italy. Finally, the group boarded a ship in the city of Bari, and sailed to Israel. This journey lasted a total of three months.
Initially, Zeev Kun settled in Kibbutz Givat Haim near Hadera. However, shortly afterward he left the country for Austria, where he enrolled in the Academy of Arts in Vienna. Zeev Kun arrived in Vienna just as the so-called Vienna School of Fantastic Realism was emerging in the city. This School is rooted in the Jugendstil and New Objectivity, an art movement founded in Germany in the aftermath of World War I. Its leaders were people of quite contrasting backgrounds. For example, Rudolph Hausner (1914–1995) had been drafted into the German army in 1941, and spent two years on the front lines as a Wehrmacht soldier, while Ernst Fuchs (1930–2015), who was half-Jewish (through his father), was only rescued and escaped a concentration camp thanks to his mother’s enormous efforts. Technically, their works had the clarity and detail of early Flemish Painting. With the years, some painters moved away from surrealism, to which they were attracted at first, to another style of creation, which can perhaps be defined as visionary mannerism.
The students and professors of the Vienna Academy of Arts sought to analyze and reflect the horrors of World War II in their art, all the while maintaining a dialogue with both the masters of the German Renaissance, such as Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and with the Surrealists who had been active in the 1920s and 1930s – first of all, Max Ernst (1891–1976). According to Zeev Kun, back then he felt especially close to Anton Lehmden (1929–2018) and Ernst Fuchs. The main theme of Fuchs’ works was the Apocalypse; his paintings are shot through with the fear of an inevitable catastrophe, of the imminent destruction of the world. In his paintings, which are full of pain and despair, the presence of death is always palpable. It is no wonder that Kun, who had survived the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was so deeply touched and moved by the works of this painter, who was of an age with him.
After returning to Israel, Zeev Kun was admitted to the local Association of Artists and Sculptors, but his artistic manner was rather different from what was then regarded as the true contemporary art trends. He had to wait until 1963 before he managed to openly exhibit the works showing his unique and instantly recognizable style. Many gallery owners thought Zeev Kun had lost his mind, because, while his impeccable technique allowed him to achieve any artistic goal he would set himself, he still focused on creating deep and philosophical works, which failed to bring him commercial profit.
Of all the Israeli art institutions, the only one that ever worked with Kun on a regular basis was the Gallery of Eliezer Rosenfeld, founded in 1952. Kun’s exhibitions took place in London (1965), Sydney (1967), New York (1968), Detroit (1970), Paris (1972 and 1994), Stockholm (1975), Antwerp (1976), and Berlin (1987). However, strangely enough, neither the Israel Museum in Jerusalem nor the Tel Aviv Museum of Art have ever held a retrospective exhibition of his works. Of all the artistic awards in Israel, he received only the Max Nordau Prize (1973), which falls far short of a recognition of his true merits and contribution to art, both in Israel and abroad. Therefore, almost fifty years later, last December, it was our privilege to name Zeev Kun as the first recipient of the Moshe Castel Prize for an outstanding contribution to Israeli art. Together with our Museum’s CEO Hagai Sasson, we awarded it to Zeev at his apartment in early January. Zeev was no longer in good health, but surely we could not have known that we would loose him in less than six months...
Zeev Kun’s artistic destiny was largely predetermined by the decade of 1943–1953. His teen years were destroyed by the horrors of the death camps; he spent his youth at the art academies of Budapest and Vienna, and then he began a new life on the soil of the young State of Israel, which was dealing with the consequences of the Holocaust and the losses suffered during the War of Independence of 1948–1949. In Zeev Kun's paintings, life is not separated from the world of death, and the world of death "lives its own life" even when no living person is around. As Professor G. Recanat put it, “Zeev Kun has created a poetic world inhabited by inanimate objects turned into living characters that tell their stories through touching still lifes. But, maybe, it is these old and long-abandoned objects, these decaying old buildings, so defenseless against fate, that constitute the best symbolic representation of the modern society that has made consumerism and wealth accumulation its religion. The brush of the painter transforms these paintings into heartfelt anthems of real human values.” In his works, Zeev Kun has created a unique materialized world, which has been abandoned by people against their will. The victims of the Holocaust, who were captured and deported in haste, did not have the time to take anything with them. Thus, almost everything they had in their homes remained there, either intact or in some disarray. But, regardless, the people to whom these objects used to give comfort are no longer there. The material objects cannot take care of themselves, so their world falls apart – slowly, but surely.
That is the core message Zeev Kun seeks to convey to his viewers. At first sight, the interiors and exteriors he paints seem pleasant and attractive, but then they turn out to be the images of “death after death,” the visions of life after the Apocalypse – a life that still goes on, but gradually, inevitably, slows down. Objects usually live much longer than people do, but buildings have a purpose only when they give shelter to someone, while furniture and kitchenware exist solely to make a house a home. Only people can give objects a true life and meaning; otherwise they remain inanimate and useless, doomed to decay as nature takes its course. That is what Zeev Kun shows so vividly in his canvases.
One of the leading representatives of post-Holocaust surrealism (alongside Anatol Gurewitsch, Yosl Bergner and Samuel Bak), Zeev Kun has produced a large number of astonishing landscapes and still lifes, yet he rarely painted portraits or self-portraits. That is the reason why his “Self-Portrait with an Easel” really stands out among his works, and we were most pleased to exhibit it in our Museum last year. Through paintings like this, the artist lets the viewers into his studio, literally opening up to them. The room is modest, and even somewhat bland: a simple still-life is laid out on an old blue border tablecloth. The grey-bluish walls, with a tinge of yellow, without any decorative patterns, show deep paint cracks. The whole scene is painted with gentle, transparent, almost graphic brushstrokes, which remind one of a pencil or pastel drawing. Daylight fills the room evenly, and everything here seems so transparent, weightless, airy, even misty, like a distant memory from the past. In the background, one can see the artist’s self-portrait, all painted in a palette of grey and brown, like a charcoal drawing, partly hidden behind an easel. The artist’s face is shown from the side, as though he were turning away from us. Indeed, he is all alone with his memory, watching his viewer with only one eye. But how could it be otherwise? In a way, one of his eyes is always full of the horrific visions of Auschwitz; it is always there, and even decades later he is doomed to watch the world around him with only one eye, because the other is still fixed on what he saw and endured in those terrible days.
One of Zeev Kun’s main themes is a clock that stopped forever, which will never resume its ticking; there will be no one to wake up to its alarm and start a new day. Despite the national Jewish rebirth in Israel and in some countries of the Diaspora, the painful memory of the Holocaust can never be healed, and it will live within us forever. That is the key message conveyed by Zeev Kun, the core idea expressed so vividly in all of his works. Zeev Kun and his art will endure, enriching us for decades and centuries after his death.
Dr. Alek D. Epstein,
Curator, The Moshe Castel Museum of Art in Ma’ale Adumim
