Mural from Old Czestochowa Synagogue
The MHM’s new permanent exhibition, Everybody Had a Name, features an artistic reimagining of the elaborate ceiling mural from the Old Czestochowa Synagogue in Poland.
Anna Hirsh
Dr Anna Hirsh, MHM’s Manager of Collections & Research, has recreated Perec Willenberg’s stunning work, guided by a handful of photographs of the ceiling, Willenberg’s surviving artworks, and other historical and artistic references.
The synagogue was destroyed by the Nazis in 1943.
So how did Anna Hirsh recreate the mural?
She said: “There were photos taken when Perecs Willenberg was painting the mural with his team of artists, and there are about six or seven incomplete images of the ceiling that were taken at that time, in black and white.
I worked using a book in which there is a postwar drawing of the ceiling. In addition to the handful of photographs, I used digital methods to reconstruct how the ceiling would have looked based on those photographs. Then, I hand-painted the Photoshopped photographs. I then collaged that, photographed it, and printed it out onto the panels. So it was a very long process, which is what I’ll be taking the audience through next Thursday night.
She spoke about Perecs Willenberg. “He was brilliant. He actually came from a religious background but became more secular. He grew up in a household where his father was into mysticism and Kabbalah. And he harnessed all of that with his formal artistic studies and practice. He was interested in contemporary secular life across Europe. But he or he also integrated his knowledge of Judaism and Jewish religion, into his visual iconography.”
Willenberg survived the was posing as a deaf-mute painting Christian themes.
As part of the museum’s Czestochowa Room, this recreation is a tribute to the beauty and meaning of Europe’s destroyed synagogues, inspiring a visual understanding of pre-war Jewish religion and culture to Australian audiences.
Mark Ashkanasy, eminent art and architectural photographer and digital artist, will join Anna to describe his contributions to this ceiling project: photographing the work and his methodologies and philosophies of digital post-production in preparation for its installation.
Date: Thursday, July 4
Time: 7pm
Cost: $20
Where: Melbourne Holocaust Museum
