Paintings and drawings by Shulamith Wittemberg, a native Palestinian artist, comprise the current exhibition at the Roerich Museum, 103rd Street and Riverside Drive.
Miss Wittemberg was born in Jerusalem in 1907. Her grandfather, a Christian, because of his great love for the Holy Land, migrated to Palestine. He adopted the Jewish faith and in this religion brought up his children. Miss Wittemberg began painting at a very early age. She studied in Betzalel (Jerusalem), and later for a short time worked with the cultured and eclectic André L’Hote in Paris.
Miss Wittemberg is young and her work is young. She is genuinely gifted, has a fine sense of color, texture and composition. In some paintings she attempted and fairly succeeded in conveying the heat and dryness of the climate. In others she evokes our sympathy for the dirty, ragged Palestinian urchins. A drawing of a dreamy-eyed Bedouin girl is quite lovely.
In many of her paintings Miss Wittemberg seems to give more thought to the technique of painting rather than to the subject itself. She seems to worry more on how to paint than what to paint. A number of her paintings are marred by a heavy impasto. In this preoccupation with technique lies her greatest danger.
When you return to Palestine, my dear Miss Wittemberg, try to forget all you have learned in the schools of Betzalel and Paris. Throw technique and all that it implies overboard.
Palestine is a strange and fascinating country. I have been there. It fairly took my breath away. I could not paint there for I did not wish, like so many others, to walk the country and paint all the places of historical and sentimental interest. I felt that they would not have been the work of a native deeply rooted and sincere, but rather impressions of tourist, a mere passerby—clever perhaps, glittering, but shallow and hurried. You, Miss Wittemberg, are a native, and in this lies your greatest advantage. Try to learn anew the language of Palestine, its spirit of age and youth. Become part of its soil, so hard and niggardly in places, so generous and yielding in others. Every spot in Palestine is historical. The hills, valleys and rivulets evoke memories of the past. In art, love is knowledge and only when you are profoundly in love with your subject will you achieve something worthwhile and lasting.
In the adjoining gallery may be seen water-colors by Frank Horowitz, a young Russian-American artist.
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