Temple Emanuel Sanctuary Wall (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

Lucienne Bloch was a Swiss-born artist who spent the majority of her career working in the United States. Bloch is often noted for her relationship with the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, whose work inspired her own diverse creative practices, from murals to photography to sculpture. Bloch was born in Geneva, the daughter of the composer Ernest Bloch. She first studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and then spent a year working in glass at the Leerdam Glassworks in Amsterdam. During an exhibition of her work in New York in 1931, Bloch met Rivera, whose controversial Rockefeller mural she photographed, secretly, before it was destroyed. Her friendship with Kahlo and Rivera inspired her foray into mural painting, and Bloch became a talented muralist in her own right. Among her many impressive works is a thousand-square-foot mural at Temple Emanuel in Grand Rapids, Michigan.