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Art as Refuge: Sketches and Insights on the Jewish-Polish Art Scene from a Refugee’s Perspective

Publication date: 03.2025

Studia Judaica, 2024, Issue 2 (54), pp. 261-290

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.24.013.21130

Authors

Aviv Livnat
University of Haifa, Israel
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1367-0678 Orcid
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Titles

Art as Refuge: Sketches and Insights on the Jewish-Polish Art Scene from a Refugee’s Perspective

Abstract

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.

References

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Information

Information: Studia Judaica, 2024, Issue 2 (54), pp. 261-290

Article type: Original article

Titles:

English: Art as Refuge: Sketches and Insights on the Jewish-Polish Art Scene from a Refugee’s Perspective

Authors

Published at: 03.2025

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY  licence icon

Percentage share of authors:

Aviv Livnat (Author) - 100%

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English

Art as Refuge: Sketches and Insights on the Jewish-Polish Art Scene from a Refugee’s Perspective

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