Artist: Chana Kowalska
Date: 1934
Size: 45 x 60 cm
Museum: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (London, United Kingdom)
Technique: Oil On Canvas
Despite Kowalska’s naïve style of painting, her strong lines, bold colours and simplified figures often disguise a more complex message in which a series of contrasting images are linked both literally and symbolically. In Shtetl - the traditional Jewish village or small town with a tightly-knit community that was common throughout eastern Europe before the Holocaust – Kowalska conjures up an archetypal scene with, at its centre, villagers gathering round the water pump. Nevertheless, the horse-drawn cart winding up a street lined with traditional, single-storey houses (a motif also used in her painting The Bridge, Ben Uri Collection) warns of a fast-disappearing way of life. Pavements and streetlights signal approaching modernisation and a church in the distance underlines the presence of the wider community. Many of Kowalska’s paintings recall her homeland and their folk-like quality, bright palette and unnatural perspective have affinities with the work of Chagall. This is one of two works by Kowalska in the Ben Uri Collection.
Artist |
|
|---|---|
Download |
|
Permissions |
Free for non commercial use. See below. |
 |
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
|
Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may
not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the
