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Women
Women feature strongly in this exhibition not only as the subject within the paintings but also as the creators of many of the works, both as official war artists and as survivor artists.
Morris Kestelman
Lama Sabachthani [Why have
you forsaken me?], 1943
oil, Imperial War Museum
Leslie Cole
Belsen Camp: The compound for
women, 1945
oil, Imperial War Museum
Doris Zinkeisen
Human Laundry, Belsen:
April 1945
oil, Imperial War Museum
Morris Kestelman places women directly in the foreground of his 1943 painting, Lama Sabachthani. They dominate the picture; some raise their arms up in distress beseeching God to help them, while others look as though they have given up in despair.
In the official records painted by Leslie Cole, The Compound for Women and Doris Zinkeisen's Human Laundry, women are seen as skeletal, racked by disease and objects to be pitied. The anonymity of these victims is countered by Eric Taylor's delicate and moving watercolour, Liberated from Belsen Concentration Camp, a portrait of a frail-looking woman. Her wrists and ankles are painfully thin, and her expression shows she is lost in thought.
Mary Kessell produced a series of sensitively observed sketches of women and children in Belsen a few months after liberation. Her diary gives added insight to what she saw and felt at this time as those who had survived tried to resume some kind of life. In Notes from Belsen, she shows a female refugee being lifted and carried towards transport and possible survival. What at first looks like despair has a glimmer of hope. The composition, with the strong diagonal of the prostrate figure being lifted surrounded by a group of figures, is reminiscent of a well-known composition used by artists such as Rubens and Rembrandt of Christ being taken down from the cross (Deposition).
Roman Halter
Woman Wearing Mantilla,
1974-1977
oil, Imperial War Museum
George Mayer-Marton
Women with Boulders, 1945
watercolour, Imperial War Museum
The mothers of both Roman Halter and George Mayer-Marton were murdered by the Nazis, as were other members of their families. George Mayer-Marton's melancholic Women with Boulders shows a bleak landscape with two lonely female figures. The boulders are reminiscent of stones placed on Jewish graves to protect the body waiting for resurrection. Roman Halter paints the striking face of Woman Wearing Mantilla based on memories of his mother dressed in her finery at the synagogue – a time before the horrors of war and persecution.
Alicia Melamed Adams painted Looking Back, a self-portrait, in 1962 as a way of helping to tackle her depression; painting was a way of coming to terms with her past. She said of this work, 'You can see me coming out of darkness towards the light'.
![Morris Kestelman, Lama Sabachthani [Why have you forsaken me?]. A group of Jewish men, women and children weep and mourn over a mound of corpses. Further large heaps of corpses and burning buildings are visible in the background. The mourning men wear prayer shawls and pillbox hats and carry Torah scrolls. The women wear headscarves or shawls over their hair.](../artists/images/48_IWM_ART_016786_lge.jpg)
