Artist and survivor
Holocaust Museum Houston shows 38 works by Samuel Bak
Carol Manley, chief curator of Holocaust Museum Houston, recommends starting from the rear of the Samuel Bak Art Gallery to experience 38 works by Bak that have been rotated into the space. Specifically, one should start at the artist’s “Self-Portrait,” painted in 1946 when he was only 13.
Moving clockwise, the pieces transition from dark to light. The evolution reflects Bak’s childhood, shattered as a survivor of the Holocaust, to an eventual return to his Lithuanian hometown of Vilna. Today, at 89, he lives in Boston.
“You can watch him grow as he’s painting,” Manley says. “He becomes more colorful over time.”
When the Germans occupied Vilna in 1941, Bak and his mother were separated from his father. Three years later, Bak’s father rescued his son from the Children’s Aktion, a mass-murder event, by smuggling him out in a sack. The family was later sent to forced labor camp HKP 562; Bak and his mother survived, but his father was shot just 10 days before Vilna’s liberation.
“As a child, he lived through a very dark and scary period. As he’s gotten older, he’s become more content,” Manley says. “I can’t speak for him, but that’s my assessment.”
The year before “Self-Portrait,” Bak was sent to Munich to study art. There, he frequented city museums and became familiar with German expressionism. Then Bak and his mother moved to Lodz, Poland, where an exhibition showcasing his work opened in 1947; that same year, a Hebrew newspaper and the Yiddish Forverts in New York published his art.
Holocaust Museum Houston currently houses the largest permanent Bak collection in the U.S., with more than
140 pieces. University of Nebraska Omaha may soon overtake that distinction; the institution was recently gifted more than 500 works to estab
lish a Samuel Bak museum.
One of Manley’s favorite works in the gallery is “Pear” (1995).
“It’s just a simple pear, but the pear represents human life in the womb,” she explains. “To him, human life is broken.”
As one of Bak’s recurring symbols, the pear has also been known to symbolize fruit from the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden, a paradise lost.
Nearby, “Saving the Face” (2015) captures three men attempting to reconstruct a damaged bust with Lady Justice’s scales blocking each eye. Her appearance marks another recurring theme. Bak uses her presence to question if balance can ever be restored to life. And, does justice exist for the 6 million Holocaust victims or survivors?
“From That Time” (1984) also employs the number 6 to note the 6 million lives lost and the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shall not kill.” The piece includes broken buildings and everyday objects.
“He does that to ask if these things can ever be repaired, and should they be?” Manley says. It’s been suggested that Bak uses damage to ensure viewers remember the Holocaust. Once objects are fixed, it’s easier to forget how they were destroyed in the first place.
In other works, chess boards stand in for war, with women and children as pawns to illustrate their vulnerability and manipulation. In “Still Life” (1993), a rare pastel on paper, Bak is cautiously optimistic, implying that in spite of devastation, there is still life.
Perhaps the gallery’s most thought-provoking pieces are of Vilna, drawn from memory in “The Entire City” (1977-1980) and “Landscape.”
“Sam didn’t return to his hometown until 15 to 20 years ago,” Manley says.
The pieces offer the faintest glimmer of hope, restoration and repair.