Creator Bio
Yosl Bergner
1920–2017
Viennese-born painter, illustrator, and set designer Yosl Bergner grew up in Warsaw, the son of Yiddish writer Melekh Ravitch. He emigrated to Australia in 1937, where he studied painting at the Art School of the National Gallery of Victoria and became influential in the Australian art scene. In the early 1950s, after serving in the Australian Army, Bergner and his wife settled in Israel. He won the Dizengoff Prize for painting and sculpture in 1956 and, in 1980, the Israel Prize for painting. In 1985, Bergner paid a return visit to Australia, where a major retrospective exhibition of his paintings was held at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Father and Sons
Yosl Bergner was only twenty-one years old and living in Australia when he painted this bleak picture. Many of his paintings were drawn from memories of his childhood in Warsaw but he also portrayed…
Primary Source
A Sad Story
Although Bergner did not personally experience the Holocaust, it was a recurring theme in his art. Here, in a painting in the style of a child’s drawing, a child wearing a hat, typical of others seen…