Mané-Katz: Music After the War

Throughout the work of Mané-Katz, a School of Paris artist who lived in Haifa, motifs of music and musical instruments recur again and again: klezmer players, musicians at weddings and celebrations, portraits of modern musicians, and biblical scenes in which the figures hold instruments. Mané-Katz also made several series of sculptures of klezmer musicians, and even painted sculptures he had made himself. Music and musicians were, without question, a central part of his artistic and personal world.

This exhibition presents paintings and sculptures of klezmer musicians from the collection of the Mané-Katz Museum. The collection, numbering some 1,300 objects, is based on the artist's estate which he bequeathed to the city of Haifa, and which includes approximately 180 oil paintings. These works had not been exhibited for many years and have undergone extensive restoration, including cleaning, paint consolidation, and replacing of stretchers, thanks to the generous support of the Schusterman Foundation Israel.

The works on display were painted after the Second World War. Mané-Katz was deeply affected by the destruction of the communities of his childhood, and his paintings reveal a desire to preserve the world of music he had known from his earliest days. In all the paintings, music emerges as a fundamental part of communal life, Jewish tradition, and cultural memory.

In some of the paintings the palette is delicate and restrained, while in others it is luminous and almost surreal. In The Artist - Self-Portrait, Mané-Katz depicted himself surrounded by the things closest to his world: through the window, the city of Paris is visible; on the table there is a fish, a baguette, and a palette of paint. Behind the artist appears an unfinished painting of a bass player, the only part of the work left incomplete. In another painting, Solitude, the emotional experience is embodied in the figure of a violinist. The exhibition also includes a painting in which Mané-Katz portrays a sculpture of his own making, shown here alongside the sculpture itself.

Although the Mané-Katz Museum is not currently open, ongoing work continues to preserve and care for the collection. The museum has, regrettably, been closed for several years owing to a lack of accessibility for visitors with physical disabilities. This exhibition seeks to turn a spotlight on Mané-Katz's singular body of work and to keep his artistic legacy alive in the public consciousness, in the hope that a solution will soon be found and the museum reopened.

The exhibition was made possible through the generosity of the Schusterman Family Philanthropies – Israel.

Ron Hillel 
Exhibition Curator; Collection Manager, Haifa Museums