Chagall to Kitaj

This is a revised and updated edition of Jewish Experience in the Art of the Twentieth Century (Bergin & Garvey, 1984). Beautifully illustrated, this book contains 48 more color illustrations than the first edition, as well as more than 200 black and white and color illustrations. Also, over fifty percent of the illustrations have been changed from the first edition and the text has been substantially revised. From reviews of the first edition-- Jews in this century have...
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This is a revised and updated edition of Jewish Experience in the Art of the Twentieth Century (Bergin & Garvey, 1984). Beautifully illustrated, this book contains 48 more color illustrations than the first edition, as well as more than 200 black and white and color illustrations. Also, over fifty percent of the illustrations have been changed from the first edition and the text has been substantially revised. From reviews of the first edition-- Jews in this century have coped with mass migrations, adaptation, the Holocaust, a return to roots. How have these experiences left their mark on modern art? It is a neglected question, and one that finds a myriad of answers in Kampf's important, stunningly illustrated book, which offers a much-needed new perspective.

Publisher's Weekly

What a splendid work. An excellent and intelligent text. As for the illustrations, they, like the text, are stunning, exciting, and moving, and much else, all at the same time. It is a book that is destined to endure, and to have a great influence.

Ashley Montagu

It is superb--a noble and necessary effort carried out with both passion and scholarly detachment.

Wolf Von Eckardt, Time Magazine

This unique volume brings together artists active in the broad stream of the modern movement, whose work responds to experience of the world at large and reflects in particular those Jewish themes and concerns which have marked the turbulent events of our era. Many of these artists, whether at home in England or the Americas, in Europe or Israel, have been immigrants or children of parents who were part of large migrations from East to West. They or their parents have struggled to adapt and survive in strange environments and new landscapes while preserving their own cultural identity. Some were inmates in camps or lived in hiding, others were about to build and defend a home in their ancient land. Many came from families deeply rooted in Jewish religious faith or Hebrew culture. Whatever their individual situation or personal history, few could ignore the momentous events which shook the very foundations of Jewish existence. As artists they reacted to a world in which the values that make human individual and communal life meaningful were strained to the limit and tested by unpredictable and inconceivable results.

Avram Kampf focuses on artists such as Mordechai Ardon, David Bomberg, Marc Chagall, R. B. Kitaj, Jack Levine, Amadeo Modigliani, Mark Rothko, Chaim Soutine, and Max Weber whose works of art are an expression of the Jewish people, the approaching catastrophe, the Holocaust, Israel, and the religious traditions and philosphies nourished from Jewish sources. Chagall to Kitaj portrays the artists and their work as part of a cultural investigation into the nature and significance of the Jewish contribution to art in our century. This is an indispensable book for art libraries and will be of great interest to art historians, those involved in Judaic studies, and others studying the art of the twentieth century.