Chaim Goldberg
Chaim Goldberg was a Polish-Israeli-American artist, painter, sculptor, and engraver. He is known for being a chronicler of Jewish life in the eastern European Polish villages like the one in his native Kazimierz Dolny in south-eastern Poland. He witnessed the colorful life and began to draw what he saw. The recurring art colony atmosphere became the highpoint of his self-actualization dreams, as he envisioned himself becoming an artist like those who visited the village. He yearned to experience life as they did for himself and later undertook the mission of being a leading painter of Holocaust-era art, which to the artist was seen as an obligation and art with a sense of profound mission.
Following World War II he emigrated to Israel and in 1967 to the United States. He and his family became US citizens in 1973. He died in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2004.
Early life
Goldberg was born in a wooden clapboard house built by his father, a village cobbler. The house stood on Błotna Street as it was called at the time, due to the fact that the creek would overflow and the road turned to a muddy area. As a young boy of 6 he gravitated to creating little figurines carved from stones which he gave away to his friends. Later he took up drawing and painting with basic shoemaker paints that he found at his father's workbench. He was the ninth child and the first boy after eight girls. He grew up in a religious home in Kazimierz Dolny. He would observe and draw the beggars and klezmers who frequented his home as guests. His father would encourage their stays by letting it be known that the humble Goldberg home was open for those who could not pay for their night stay at any of the inns. They were surely welcome there. These characters became Goldberg's early models.Discovery and first shtetl period
On a crisp day in the fall of 1931, Dr. Saul Silberstein, a student of Sigmund Freud who was doing post-doctorate work on his book, Jewish Village Mannerisms came into the Goldberg cobbler workshop to have his shoes repaired. As he waited for the repair, he noticed the numerous artworks that were attached to the wall with shoe nails and inquired who the artist was.Silberstein spent the entire night reviewing the young artist’s work. In the morning, they went by foot to Lublin, a distance of 26 miles, and Dr. Silberstein obtained the opinions of several respected individuals of Goldberg's work. He then got him several small scholarships based on these letters of recommendation. This helped finance his early education at the "Józef Mehoffer School for Fine Arts", in Kraków, from which he graduated in 1934.
Dr. Silberstein was able to interest several other wealthy sponsors, such as the honorable Felix Kronstein, a judge, and a newspaper publisher who supported the artist through his graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. At 17, he was the youngest to be admitted and studied under the Rector of the Academy and Professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski, Kowarski, Władysław Skoczylas and.
The beauty of Kazimierz Dolny had long ago been discovered by artists who had flocked there in large numbers over the years. Between the First World War and the Second World War, Kazimierz Dolny became known as an Art Colony as well. Prof. Tadeusz Pruszkowski had built a summer studio in the mountains and encouraged his students to come down and paint outdoors. Many of these artists as well as older ones painted the life they saw and the landscape.
Goldberg became stimulated by this interaction with the artists and despite being totally unschooled in that craft. He studied the actions of the artists and they encouraged him to become involved. He set himself up with a home-made easel, and painted outdoors. When he was discovered at the age of 14, his collection included landscapes and paintings of the vagabonds that frequented his home as guests.
The war years 1939–1945
Goldberg was conscripted into the Polish army in the fall of 1938. He was assigned to the artillery brigade that guarded Warsaw. After the Polish army surrendered to the Germans, he became a POW, held in a labor camp. He would escape but was unsuccessful in the attempts to convince his parents and family of the plans of the Germans about treating Jews badly.Goldberg, his future wife, her sister, and their parents escaped by foot to Russia moving north as the Germans advanced, settling in Novosibirsk. Goldberg married Rachel on April 15, 1944. They would to return to Poland in 1946.
Paris fellowship and emigration to Israel
Goldberg received a fellowship from the Polish Ministry of Culture to study at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, and in 1949 they returned to Poland. He worked on various commissions for the Polish Government and, in 1955, made an application to be allowed to immigrate to Israel. Poland was awash with a new Communist regime and Social Realism – that Goldberg found to be distasteful. The regime frowned on depictions of "Jewish Life" in Post-War art which drove a final rift between the artist and his intent to help rebuild the destroyed Poland. Instead, his wife Rachel and his two sons, Victor and Shalom, left Poland for Israel.The Goldberg family arrived in Israel in 1955. They stayed in Israel until 1967. Goldberg exhibited, and Rachel sold his work to American, and Canadian tourists, and Israeli collectors. Despite that Safed was the art colony of record; Goldberg's studio became a destination in northern Tel Aviv for tourists especially the wealthy who frequented Hotel Ramat Aviv.
Discovering Modernism
Pervasive in his watercolors, one can see the ‘stained glass’ look that he developed in 1963. He added in the studio the black lines to the color areas as a final step.This developed by accident: His son, Shalom, recalls accompanying his father on a painting trip to Tiberias. "He began his outdoor painting session by making his preliminary pencil composition and then splashed the watercolors on the sheet, brushing the color once and orienting it by the areas he sketched out, however, the session was cut short by a sudden rainstorm." Goldberg and his son packed up and returned to the studio with the drying watercolors, being held horizontally, still taped to his boards, and he set them aside on a countertop he had in the studio. "The next morning," his son recalls, "he unpacked a purchase of black magic markers and sat down to try them out on the newly coated watercolors. To his surprise, the black lines became a look he welcomed and which he began to apply to most of his work with water-based paints. Beginning with this accidental interruption, he evolved, progressing quickly, a unique style that found its way into all his other themes, even his abstract work."
Second shtetl period
Once ensconced in his large studio, Goldberg began to create large paintings that depicted Jewish life he recalled in his Shtetl of Kazimierz Dolny. During this period, of 1960-1966, he created some of his best-known paintings, such as The Wedding ; The Shtetl ; Simchat Torah ; and Don't Forget.Image:Engraving.jpg|thumb|Goldberg creating a hand-engraved image on a copper plate.
Sculptures
Goldberg's insatiable desire to create art in many mediums knew no end. He engraved and sculpted in wood, stone, and metal. Here we see a -foot-tall carving from oak, titled WE. He would stain his sculptures in various tones and have editions of 8 bronzes cast of each one he chose for editioning. His main advisor was his wife of 65 years, Rachel.The United States
In 1967, Goldberg arrived in the United States, with a two-year business visa on an exhibition tour and continued to paint, and create line engravings of his village characters, as well as sculpt. His subject matter widened while living in New York, which became one of his "themes." He and his family decided to become citizens of the United States in 1973.Influences
Goldberg's "Culture Shock" series and other series based on real life and politics of the period were the works of the series "Mad Drivers." Some of his work dealt with his own dream sequences, such as the "Violin Thief Sequence" and the "Bird Dream Sequence."In 1974, Goldberg attended a performance of Emmett Kelly, Jr.'s circus and began a series of drawings and other works on paper inspired by the circus theme. Then dance took center stage as his main subject. He also carved in wood. His body of work on the dance theme included paintings, watercolors, and sculptures carved in wood or made of aggregate concrete. Goldberg continued line engraving and created a suite of 6 engravings titled, "Spring."
In videotaped interviews with the artist's son, Shalom, it becomes clear that Goldberg's career took two parallel paths of creation by virtue of his ability to compartmentalize his time and to the success of his Judaic theme to support him and his family throughout his life.