The quest to find my great-grandfather’s lost art means I spend a great deal of time focusing on what is missing from the original collection and searching for clues from the past rather than reflecting on what I know about the pieces my family already has. This collaborative video project with Paige Dansinger enables me to pause and gaze inward – to take a longer look at the pieces we already have and to reflect on what each of the pieces shows and teaches us about his body of work.

Although the Moshe Rynecki story begins with an artist whose life and work belong squarely in the 20th century, today the #mrynecki story is also very much a contemporary one.  Paige (who is in Minneapolis) and I met on Twitter.  We have never met in person (I live in California) but talked on the phone and used email, Facebook, and Twitter to collaborate.  This project is the result of a social media connection and friendship that gave me the opportunity to curate and explore an element of my great-grandfather’s work – representations of women – that otherwise sometimes gets lost in the shadow of his portrayal of men in religious study.

I love that this project breathes new life into my great-grandfather’s art and leads me to new discoveries.

[Note: Below the video are the six images Paige paints in the video.]

I know from my grandpa George’s memoir that the family lived at 24 Krucza Street in Warsaw.  He writes of it twice in his memoir.  This is his most vivid description of the apartment:

I have brought my sister through machine gunfire about ten city blocks from the exams to our home on Krucza 24 where we lived at this time. We had an apartment of six rooms on the third floor. Uncounted paintings and sculpture adorned the walls. Our upright piano, black ebony, in the living room. Red mahogany furniture. And ever present art. My father, Moshe, was an artist, a known painter.

I also have an envelope showing the building number as the return address for a letter my great-grandfather wrote to Otto Schneid.

 

 

 

 

 

And for a long time I’ve been told the portrait of my great-grandmother, Perla, was painted inside the shop the family ran in the building.

 

 

 

 

 

And I know from Google maps street view what the building at the address looks like today.

 

 

 

 

But I’ve never seen what the building looked like before the war, before it was destroyed, and hauled away as rubble.  Today I got an email from a man who pointed out a website that appears to be displaying the photographs of a building that was 24 Krucza Street, the same building where my great-grandparents lived.  These are those photos, taken before 1939, and labeled on the website as coming from a private collection.  Even more incredible, the man who emailed me says his great-grandparents lived at 25 Krucza Street, the building across the street.

 

 

I am not the only heir of a Jewish artist searching for lost art.  It’s important that all stories of searches (and finds!) be more well known.  I thought I’d share the three people and artists with whom I am familiar.

Miriam Friedman Morris – Miriam’s father, David Friedmann (later changed to Friedman) was an Austrian painter and graphics artist who lived in Berlin from 1911 until the end of 1938, when he fled the Nazis to Prague.  I was lucky enough to meet Miriam in New York in June 2013 at the German Consulate General and to see the work of her father which was on display in the “Painting to Survive – The Work of David Friedman” exhibit.  You can also view a video of the opening reception of the David Friedman Exhibition.  In addition to collecting her father’s lost and scattered works, she also has generously donated them to many [Read more…]