Aviv Livnat
Studia Judaica, Issue 2 (54), First View
The works of Maurice Gottlieb and Samuel Hirszenberg express corporeal wandering and psychological ambulation characteristic of the refugee condition. The third artistic stratagem emerges in the works of the copper artist Arieh Merzer. His work embodies a liminal form of movement, an elusive dynamism etched into metallic surfaces. This interstitial motion is situated between the external and internal realms, occupying the depth of the relief medium that stands between painting and sculpture, engaging the world while simultaneously withdrawing from it. Merzer’s aesthetic thereby exemplifies the intricate dialectic of the refugee experience, one alternately characterized by an inexorable sense of displacement and entrapment in a Penrose-like perpetual movement that can lead to new creative expressions. His art is an art as refuge.
Aviv Livnat
Studia Judaica, Issue 1 (43), 2019, pp. 49 - 79
https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.19.004.11231Historic copper repoussé was advanced and rejuvenated by the work of Jewish artists in Poland in the period between the two world wars. Numerous metaloplastics exhibitions were held in Warsaw and Łódź, engendering interest in artistic circles and among critics. Through works from the Jewish metaloplastic art scene, copper reliefs by Marek Szwarc, Chaim Hanft, Józef Śliwniak, and Arieh Merzer, the author attempts to shed new light on these very significant modern expressions of Jewish-Polish interactions created with copper. In the context of Polish culture and the art scene, copper was also making its comment on the fragile and complicated contacts between Poles and Jews with its inner spiritual essence of unity and within its depths.