Summer Exhibitions: Chim: Between Devastation and Resurrection and The Magic World of Leonora Carrington
July 7 – October 13, 2024
Chim: Between Devastation and Resurrection
Chim: Between Devastation and Resurrection shines a light on the often-overlooked details about the aftermath of World War II. The exhibit presents the postwar reconstruction of Europe, European elections, the effect of the war on children, the birth of the new State of Israel, and the Suez Crisis with over 50 photographs by preeminent 20th-century photojournalist David Seymour, also known as Chim.
Though framed by the destruction and devastation of war, Chim’s work focuses primarily on ordinary people and the intimacy of their daily lives. With images ranging from school children waiting for the bus amidst the ruins of the destroyed Warsaw ghetto to a woman watering her tomato garden amid her bombed-out building and children playing on Normandy Beach surrounded by the wreckage of the D-Day invasion, Chim’s images offer a glimpse into life after destruction and loss as the rubble of war became the foundation of postwar Europe.
Ben Shneiderman, a distinguished university professor and Chim’s nephew, will present a lecture The Life and Work of David “Chim” Seymour on July 21 at Noon. Event information here.
Chim was born Dawid Szymin in Warsaw in 1911 into a family of publishers specializing in Hebrew and Yiddish literature. After World War II, he published under the name David Seymour and used the sobriquet Chim. He began his career in 1933 photographing for leftist magazines in Paris and covered the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Back in Paris, Chim faced terrible prospects as a Jew, a foreigner, and a leftist and escaped France for New York in 1939. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, using his photographic abilities and his ability to speak six languages to qualify as a photo interpreter in the Aerial Photographic Interpretation Detachment. After WWII, Chim co-founded the Magnum photo agency with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and George Rodger. In 1948, he was commissioned by UNICEF to photograph the war’s effect on European children. This project, “Children of Europe,” was published by LIFE magazine and in book form – many of the photos in Chim: From Destruction to Resurrection come from this project. Chim’s remarkable career was tragically cut short when he was killed by sniper fire while on assignment in 1956 during the Suez Crisis.
Chim: Between Devastation and Resurrection is on loan from the Illinois Holocaust Museum. The original exhibition was excerpted from We Went Back: Photographs from Europe 1933-1956 by Chim, organized by the International Center of Photography and made possible by the John and Anna Maria Phillips Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. OJMCHE gratefully acknowledges the Arnold and Augusta Newman Photography Fund of OJMCHE for supporting the exhibition.
The Magic World Of Leonora Carrington
The Magic World Of Leonora Carrington features 17 prints including a portfolio of 11 lithographs illustrating the artist’s costume designs for a stage production in New York of S. Ansky’s 1916 play The Dybbuk.
OJMCHE presents A Goddess Of Surrealism: A Lecture About Leonora Carrington With Dr. Abigail Susik August 8 at 6pm. Event information here.
The child of a wealthy textile manufacturer in Lancashire, England, Carrington’s early life was defined by the staunch and structured conventions of the British aristocracy. In her rebellious nature, however, she never fully yielded to the rigid expectations of high society and her religious upbringing; she was moved by an unshakeable call to the artist’s life. Her deep imagination and painterly talents, while leading her astray of the traditional education that was expected of her, allowed her instead to find community in Europe’s thriving cultural scene. Here she became acquainted with the paragons of the avant-garde such as Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst, with whom she had a romantic relationship.
In these formative years, the world around her was becoming reshaped by war, tumult, and a fundamental breakdown of societal norms. This fracturing world, along with her deep interest in and affiliation with Surrealism, played a crucial role in shaping her worldview and practice. She increasingly felt drawn to the ineffable and transcendent while also facing persecution along with her peers for her non-canonical imagery as well as her antithetical views to the rising tide of Fascism across Europe. Following Max Ernst’s internment by the Nazi’s in 1940, and her own subsequent forced hospitalization in Spain, Carrington sought refuge overseas. After a short time in New York, she made her way to Mexico amidst a massive migration of artists and intellectuals and there she lived the rest of her life. She became enamored by Mexico’s indigenous past and by the pervasive folk traditions and spiritual energy that closely paralleled her own interest in the immaterial world. Leonora Carrington is best known for a subtle yet powerful integration of both mystical and traditionally religious symbolism, with a touch of the alchemical macabre.
Always maintaining a universal view of spiritual motifs, she still sought to keep her work grounded in truth. This combination of influences from Carrington’s involvement with the Surrealists in Europe and Mexico’s many burgeoning art movements, and its indigenous culture, is strongly apparent in her body of work made in collaboration with Taller de Grafica Mexicana. The six lithographs in the exhibition independent of The Dybbuk include images that clearly capture this fusion of influences; animals, angels, dreamscapes, and spirits run through her expansive visual terrain. Her interpretation of The Dybbuk also evokes this varied lens, adapting visual motifs from Celtic myth to the Kabbalah, the ancient body of Jewish mystical writings that reveals the physical world as a reflection of more profound realities.
In her illustrations of The Dybbuk, Carrington juxtaposes the physical and the metaphysical, capturing the play’s narrative foundation. The Dybbuk tells the story of a possessed woman whose soul is inhabited by the wayfaring spirit of a recently deceased man. He died upon hearing the news that the protagonist was promised in marriage to another man. Although, her father had already promised his daughter to the dead man years before and had thus forgotten his obligation. This promise takes precedence over all others and therefore, she cannot be released from the Dybbuk and is bound in marriage to the spirit forever. Carrington’s moral universe is embodied in the themes of the play, and across all her work. Represented in symbols, dreams, and metaphysical worlds, she puts forth a worldview premised on the belief that love and compassion are the ultimate ideals of humankind.
The exhibition features works from the collection of Mixografia Print Studio and Gallery, LA. OJMCHE gratefully acknowledges the Craig E. Wollner Fund of OJMCHE for supporting the exhibition.
About Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education explores the legacy of the Jewish experience in Oregon, teaches the enduring and universal relevance of the Holocaust, and provides opportunities for intercultural conversations.