Creator Bio
Samuel Bak
b. 1933
Painter Samuel Bak was born in Vilna a few years before the start of World War II. His talent was recognized when he was still a child, and his work was exhibited in the Vilna Ghetto when he was nine years old. He went into hiding with his parents during World War II, but only he and his mother survived. When he immigrated to Israel in 1948, he enrolled at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts. Later he lived in Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. Many of Bak’s paintings focus on commemoration and memory of the Holocaust, and he is particularly well known for his surrealistic still lifes. He lives in Massachusetts.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
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Houses in an Imaginary Landscape
Samuel Bak’s paintings have been described as surrealist, but they also show the influence of Old Masters, such as Albrecht Dürer and Michelangelo. He himself has said, “I don't mind if people call my…
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Memorial
Memorial, like many of Bak’s paintings, evokes the ruins incurred by the Holocaust, in this case symbolized by the shards of shattered Jewish tombstones, possibly hinting at the two tablets of law. A…