Light from Ashes: An exhibition in Barletta for Holocaust Remembrance Day

At the Prefecture Palace, an exhibition of works created by Jewish artists who disappeared in the Holocaust or survived the extermination camps.

Light from the Ashes: Some of the works on display in Barletta

On January 27, 2023 , on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day , the international anniversary that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, the exhibition Luce dalla Cenere will be inaugurated in Barletta, in the rooms on the ground floor of the Palazzo della Prefettura UTG di Barletta-Andria-Trani (in via Cialdini 60), in which a series of works created by Jewish artists who disappeared in the Shoah or survived the extermination camps will be exhibited.

The exhibition, which is free to enter, will be open on Friday, January 27th from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm, and on Saturday, January 28th and Sunday, January 29th from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm and from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm . The exhibition will feature paintings and engravings from the collection donated by the Milanese poet, writer, and historian Roberto Malini to the Fondazione Istituto di Letteratura Musicale Concentrazionaria , based in Barletta.

The initiative, promoted by the Municipality of Barletta and the UTG Prefecture of Barletta-Andria-Trani, is curated by the Foundation itself, chaired by Maestro Francesco Lotoro, a pianist and conductor who has been involved for over thirty years in researching music written in concentration camps and other places of civilian and military captivity around the world during the Second World War.

The works on display are the fruit of Roberto Malini's years of research to save this art from dispersion and oblivion; a commitment that earned him the 2018 Pasquale Rotondi Award for Patronage. The collection donated to the ILMC Foundation was born as a continuation of the long study, field research, and rescue of over two hundred works of art currently held at the National Shoah Museum in Rome. Among the works on display in Barletta, all precious testimonies to collective memory, are an oil painting by Jacob Vassover ( Klezmer Musicians , 1980), a lithograph by Marc Chagall ( Mystic Crucifixion , 1950); a dramatic woodcut by Ari Glass ( Rabbi - Kristallnacht , 1943) and a delicate oil painting by the Jewish painter from Pesaro Wanda Coen Biagini ( The Veiled Woman, 1942), an artist appreciated by colleagues of the calibre of Giorgio De Chirico and Giacomo Balla, but whose career came to an abrupt end with the entry into force in 1938 of the infamous Racial Laws promulgated by the fascist regime.

Also on display for the first time is Joseph Pressmane 's "Massacre of Ukrainian Jews by Einsatzgruppe C." This unique work was created by a prominent artist born in Ukraine, where the extermination took place. As a member of the Ukrainian Jewish community, Pressmane, who was in Paris at the time, received firsthand information about the massacres, even as he was forced to hide to avoid arrest by the collaborationist authorities. No other known artwork by Ukrainian Jewish artists bears witness to the Babi Yar massacre, so closely related to the tragic event.

On the occasion of this exhibition, Roberto Malini—who will be present at the inauguration—will bring to Barletta a new work entitled "Young Women in a Polish Ghetto," a pencil drawing on paper created by an anonymous Polish Jew between 1940 and 1943. This precious drawing comes from an antiques dealer in Katowice, Poland, and was miraculously saved from the systematic destruction of Jewish artwork in Nazi-occupied Poland. It was expertly executed inside a Polish ghetto, perhaps the Warsaw Ghetto (judging by the type of armband with the Star of David depicted). Through the window, Nazi soldiers can be seen patrolling the ghetto. This powerfully emotional image captures the depth of the tragedy experienced by the Jews.

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