THE SHTETL LIGHT BY SIMON KARCZMAR

The Shtetl - a tiny model of the Universe - carried by Simon Karczmar throughout his earthly journey was implemented in his work. His paintings, lithographs and woodcuts are repleted with his childhood images and observations. The impressions of the stories in Yiddish gave the artist additional impetus.

Light is one of the most important elements in S. Karczmar's paintings. The life of Dieveniškės shtetl submerges in a cozy yellowish golden light. It illuminates chatas, people, daily life and festivities’ scenes. In the works of Safed (a shtetl analogue in Israel) period some of the plots have reoccurred, some of them are new. The golden light is replaced by the pale colour and overtaken by the intense light inherent to Israeli latitudes. Here heat permeates everyday life images. In Hebrew, "light" (אור) also has the meaning of spiritual light. That’s why it was chosen as a title of this exhibition.

The artist’s works that have travelled around half of the world have symbolically returned to his childhood home.

Curator of the exhibition Rūta Ostrovskaja