Jonasz Stern

(1904-1988)

Matter painting and semantic abstraction. Dramatic wartime events had a significant impact on Stern’s art. His assemblages, created using scraps of material and organic matter such as bones and fish bones, are a multidimensional narrative about the past. Individual elements create compositions, the form of which relate to the landscape. Stern’s paintings refer symbolically to the Holocaust – for instance, the colour of sand is linked to sites of mass extermination by shooting remembered by the author. In spite of the suffering that marked his life, through his art, Stern declares his faith in the value of human dignity.