Drama AND Discourse

The Art of PESHI HAAS

GALLERY

48 December 10, 2014

BY REBBETZIN FAIGIE HOROWITZ

trong lines, monumental buildings at odd angles, somber structures with pronounced form — the

art of Peshi Haas is striking. At fi rst you may not know what to make of the gray curves and blurry windows, but something seems familiar. Soon the outlines of a shul or a café dwarfed by looming walls come into focus. The grand edifi ces in the paintings seem to tell a dark story. A neon light, a fl ag, or a Hebrew broadsheet announcing a funeral make contemporary statements, but they don’t seem anachronistic; they are part of the pride, courage and excitement of the work.

This is the work of a young frum artist who loves to depict Jewish architecture of old through her feelings. It’s not realistic art, but an expressionistic response to the past’s presence in a contemporary context. When she sees a historic shul, a café in Rome’s Jewish quarter, a ghetto cityscape, or the interior of Khal Adas Yeshurun in Washington Heights, her response is to echo her emotions about a tortured or ravaged past with a proud presence in our times. Her use of dramatic thick and thin bold strokes tells us how she feels about the architecture of the past: sorrowful, yet proud. Deeply connected to the historical past of her European forebears from Austria and Poland, Peshi Haas is a contemporary artist who sees the present as commentary on a rich history.

The sophistication of her works, generally executed in acrylic with an oil stick overlay and charcoal, belie her heimishe roots. The Expressionism that became popular in Germany during the fi rst part of the twentieth century is the closest style to her work, with its powerful colors and dynamic compositions that express the artist’s vivid subjective responses rather than aesthetically pleasing realistic depictions. The works of Max Beckmann with their distorted color, scale and space are important infl uences, as are the Post-Impressionists and the Fauve movements.

SThe Great Synagogue of Warsaw was inaugurated in 1878 to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. It was blown up by the Germans in 1943 during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A replica was built 70 years later to commemorate the anniversary of its destruction.

The Great Synagogue of Frankfurt, built in 1884, accommodated 500 people. In 1938, the Nazis desecrated the shul and then set it afl ame. Peshi painted this particular piece using mixed media to produce a certain mood of fear and anger, vibrance and pride.

4918 Kislev 5775

Technique and Interests“Sketching and painting buildings

come naturally to me. The lines fl ow quickly and the main components come together to form a statement or a character. Architecture seems very fl uid to me; even though my art teachers told me that architectural studies must be exact, Chagall taught me that painting architecture could be whimsical. His buildings are slanted, unnatural and abstract. I learned that I could paint buildings in my own abstract personal style,” says the thirty-something young mother of four boys who lives in Lawrence, NY.

When she visits buildings here in New York City or on her travels abroad, she begins with photography and works from that medium to develop her response to its constructs and contextual meaning. Her works generally focus on exteriors, although the Breuer’s shul interior is one of several exceptions. Her fi rst solo show at the Synagogue for the Arts in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood was the result of winning a juried competition sponsored by that institution.

Ten years ago she started to paint shuls, a project that turned into a series of architectural scenes of the Jewish Quarter of Venice, of Florence, and of Paris, of the Old City in Yerushalayim, and of other historically Jewish areas. To her surprise she found that back on the Lower East Side, many of the surviving structures dated to the same period as the shuls in Eastern Europe, the 1880s. It seems that many of the European edifi ces extant today replaced ancient shuls demolished in the tumultuous 1860s. The contrast between shuls on the two continents and the proud histories of the European shuls despite persecution and neglect became the subject of her second solo show: Architecture Past and Present, at the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue in 2006. Several Kristallnacht paintings fi gured importantly in that show and were quickly sold.

Roots of a Professional Painter

How does a young Bais Yaakov girl’s work make the journey from Flatbush to

exhibits in Manhattan and Yerushalayim? It starts with family and continues with family. Peshi’s parents, Harry and Baichu Jacobowitz, provided art lessons when she showed talent and interest. Two of her aunts were important in her artistic education. Evelyne Singer — daughter of famed Dr. Julius Kuhl, a leader in rescue activities in Switzerland during the war — and her husband Dr. Israel Singer (Peshi’s mother’s brother) are art collectors with an international scope. Evelyne took Peshi to museums and nurtured her sense of Jewish history. Her father’s only sister, Aunt Suchu Solny, an art historian who works in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, introduced Peshi to the great masters.

But art school was out of the question for a frum single girl, said her parents. And so she pursued a degree in marketing at Touro College, expecting to join the family business, Jay Imports, which sells housewares and gift items.

After her marriage to Avrumi Haas of Flatbush, Peshi began formal studies at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. She took maternity leave twice while in school,

GALLERY

The Eldridge Street Shul, built in 1887, housed a fl ourishing congregation on the Lower East Side of NYC. Years later, due to major fi nancial troubles, the congregation dwindled. The shul had a rebirth in the 1970s. During the 1980s, as part of the Eldridge Street Project, this particular shul was transformed into a museum that teaches visitors all about the history of Jews on the Lower East Side.

The Lower East Side Mikveh painting exemplifi es Peshi’s style of contrasting the old with the new. This traditional structure makes a strong statement in cosmopolitan New York. Peshi selected this painting as the cover piece for her 2005 solo show, as it successfully integrated many artistic aspects. It gained a lot of attention as it was a house of purity standing amidst a very commercial lower-class street. The store awnings, street lights, and lamp posts are a portrait of contrast next to the modest house of kedushah.

50 December 10, 2014

and stopped painting during those periods. As a young mother, she accepted a position teaching studio art at Manhattan High School for Girls, her alma mater. It was through that position that she connected with the Safra Synagogue; a student in her class suggested that they visit the Safra Gallery, as her artist mother was exhibiting there, so they did, and the thought arose: If another “ordinary” frum mother could do it, why couldn’t she? And she did. The Safra Gallery was quick to off er her a solo show.

Inf luencesSeveral Jewish artists serve as Peshi’s

mentors, providing encouragement, making introductions, and off ering artistic guidance. One is Dr. Mark Podwal, famous for his work with the alef-beis. A prodigious illustrator, he is also involved in artistic restorations in Eastern Europe, including designs for the Maharal Shul in Prague and a recent exhibit in Theresienstadt. Another is Orthodox artist and School of Visual Arts Professor Toby Kahn, who helped Peshi handle some of the social challenges of the art world environment. The Jewish Arts Salon is an international group that met for several years in Manhattan and was a forum for artists creating Jewish art. Its president, Yonah Verwer, was very

helpful, introducing Peshi to a broader range of Jewish artists.

Now, with several commissions under her belt, and after a stint doing art consultations for banks purchasing art, Peshi schedules time for painting in her Lawrence studio in between mothering her four boys. “It’s therapeutic for me,” she says, “to turn to my canvases to express myself. I’m lucky that I paint quickly and can move on to the next layered painting after a week.” Peshi fi nds it faster to work with acrylics and then use oil stick on top, for an oil texture without the toxicity of oil paint.

Family closeness is a strong ethic in the large Jacobowitz family. “My grandmother, Mrs. Esther Jacobowitz, was a Polish refugee who survived exile to Siberia. She spoke all the time about her parents, about Sunik, her home town, and the way they celebrated Yom Tov there. She was a European-style matriarch, as well as a modern businesswoman with wide interests.

“Culture was also valued by my maternal grandmother, Mrs. Annie Singer, who grew up in Vienna and remembered the fi rst Knessiah Gedolah,” Peshi remarks. “Vienna, where many refugees from Poland settled after World War I, was the hub of a diverse Jewish world. It was also

an energetic center of several modernist art movements during the fi rst half of the twentieth century. These were lifelong interests of my grandmother; whenever she traveled, her destinations were cemeteries and art galleries. I hope to visit these sites and see the remnants of the city she was raised in that nourished

her spiritual and artistic spirit.”These values emerge from Peshi’s

past works, combining strong feelings for our Jewish perseverance embodied in ghetto and urban architecture with small, witty intrusions of the 20th century. The juxtaposition of the commercial and the hallowed is a small reminder of the way we Jews survive through the vicissitudes of history. Future works may refl ect diff erent styles, when Peshi confronts the sites of her family’s past.

Congregation Sha’arei Shamayim was a shul for Romanian Jews who settled on the Lower East Side. Built in the late 1880s, it was dubbed the Cantor’s Carnegie Hall as cantors such as Rosenblatt and Koussevitzky began their careers here. Simple in architecture, the shul was renowned for its high ceilings and acoustics. It later changed hands, going from synagogue to church numerous times. Painted in a whimsical manner with calming colors, the Magen Dovid is prominent at the top, a feature characteristic of Peshi’s paintings.

The Jewish Quarter in Rome once served as a ghetto to the Jews of Rome who lived there in poverty and fear. Today, the Jewish Ghetto has a fl ourishing Jewish community comprising business, history and culture. Its residents celebrate Sukkos with jubilance and participate in mitzvos with excitement. They also take pride in their culture, namely, in their kosher gourmet food and fi ne cafes. This painting is based on a photo that was taken two years ago on a Motzoei Shabbos at midnight.

5118 Kislev 5775