Siona Benjamin, a Jewish-Indian artist, uses the imagery of blue-skinned individuals in her paintings. It’s both a metaphor and a reflection of her upbringing. She writes, “I regularly look down at my skin and it has turned blue.” “It tends to do that when I encounter folks classifying and labeling people who are different from…
Siona Benjamin’s art contains an intriguing array of cultural symbols. Take, for example, Finding Home No. 46, “Tikkun ha-Olam” (2000). The blue-hued, many-armed central figure is stylized to look like a Hindu goddess, yet her arms are in the shape of a seven-branched Menorah. Aside from the goddess-like figure, there is delicate Hebrew writing painted…
Amrita Shergill (1913 to 1941). She was born to a Punjabi father and a Hungarian Jewish mother. One of the most famous painters of 20th century. She is also the ‘most expensive’ woman painter of India. Source: https://www.quora.com/Can-somebody-list-all-the-punjabi-painters-I-only-know-about-Shobha-Singh
Amrita Sher-Gil (Punjabi:) (30 January 1913 – 5 December 1941) was an eminent Indian painter born to a Punjabi Sikh father and a Hungarian Jewish mother, sometimes known as India’s Frida Kahlo, and today considered an important woman painter of 20th century India, whose legacy stands on a par with that of the Masters of…
From the 16th century, the Kadavumbagam synagogue was on the edge of the Jewish neighborhood in the Indian city of Cochin. It was built over the ruins of an even older synagogue. It had a beautiful ceiling made of carved wood that looked like the motifs in the nearby mosques and Hindu temples. As far…
Lena Gurr (1897–1992), was an American artist who made paintings, prints, and drawings showing, as one critic said, “the joys and sorrows of everyday life.” Another critic noted that her still lifes, city scenes, and depictions of vacation locales were imbued with “quiet humor,” while her portrayal of slum-dwellers and the victims of warfare revealed a…
Bettina Ehrlich, née Bauer, (10 March 1903 – 10 October 1985) was an Austrian painter and illustrator of children’s books, many of which she also wrote. She lived briefly in Berlin and Paris, and from 1938 in England. Life Bettina Bauer was born in Vienna on 10 March 1903. She studied for three years at the…
Samuel Bak (born 12 August 1933) is a Polish-Jewish painter and writer who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel in 1948. Since 1993, he has lived in the United States. Biography Shmuel Bak was born in Vilna – Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), Bak was recognized from an early age as possessing extraordinary artistic…
The painting by Siona Benjamin is called Tikkun Olam. Jews believe that Tikkun Olam is any action that improves the world and moves it closer to the harmonious state it was meant to be in. When the artist paints a picture of a pale blue female figure on top of a lotus flower, it’s a…
In a new show at the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, Karen York, the museum’s director of collections and exhibitions, talks to people about how the two groups have a lot in common, like their traditions and how they live in the same places. ‘Ancient Ways: Modern Forms,’ a show of Native American art,…