Isaac Celnikier
Desolation, 1971

Desolation, 1971
etching, signed, numbered , 1971

paper size 56x36 cm 

print size 49x29 cm  

Isaac Celnikier, French - Polish

Isaac Celnikier, painter and etcher was born in Warsaw in 1923. He was obsessed with the idea of memory and omission: locked up in the Bialystok ghetto in 1941, he will be sent to concentration camps of Stutthof, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Flossenburg, and Dachau. After the war, Isaac Celnikier starts studying art in Prague from 1946 to 1951. In 1955, he is involved in the « Contre la Guerre, Contre le fascisme » (« Against the war, against fascism ») exhibition in Warsaw. He settles in Paris in 1957. In his work , he is comitted to pass on graphically the memory of all these tragic events. André Malraux will make him Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 1967. Two major exhibitions will display his work: one in Toulouse (Musée des Augustins, 1991) and one in Montpellier (Musée Fabre, 1993). The artist will be awarded the « Mémoire de la Shoah » prize in 1993 by the French Jewish Foundation. Isaac Celnikier died in Ivry-sur-Seine in 2011.