'There is no prophet in his city' - artist Gershon Knispel • Chapter 2
In the first chapter of our story about Gershon Knispel, we followed the growth of a young man from Haifa, from childhood to the end of his studies as an outstanding student at "Bezalel", and we sketched the beginning of his development process into a vibrant and rebellious social-realist artist, under the influence of a socialist teacher-artist, as Mordechai was in the 50s Ardon
Knispel's thesis matched his heart's inclination. He had to prepare illustrations for protest songs by poets of his choice. In addition, he was required to design letters for the words of the songs, and these won a prize and were used by the artist whenever he needed to write words in his illustrations for poets' songs, and also when writing words integrated into his sculptures.
A typical inscription in Kanispel letters is shown on the monument to the fighter in the Nazis:
From the dissertation published in 1955 in the book "Poems of a Generation; Illustrated Anthology" we referred in the first chapter to the poem "The Vow" and emphasized the young artist's reference to the words:remember everything to remember and not to forget".
Knispel was very impressed by the "vow" of the poet Shalonsky, who in the fifties of the last century was the bastion of socialist secularism. Later, he said that it was then that he became interested in presenting the Holocaust in his work.
Among the poems he illustrated for the final work was another poem by Shalonsky, with the characteristic name "The Torn Flag", which also matched the artist's views on the class war and his tendency towards communism.
And indeed, near the end of his studies in 1954, Knispel joined the Palestinian Communist Party and was a loyal member of its values and dictates all his years. This association distanced him from the national and cultural consensus. The rebellious artist was immediately "recruited" at the request of the party leaders, to illustrate a book of revolutionary poems by the poet Alexander Penn, "along the way".
From the beginning of his career as an artist, Knispel's ideological and creative development was evident, which had far-reaching significance for his approach to documenting the atrocities of the Nazi regime and his response to the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
At the same time as works like the "Labor Office", huge paintings like street posters with a socio-political message that dealt with the harsh reality of life in the Land of Israel, the relations between Jews and Arabs, unemployment, the contemptuous attitude towards new immigrants, Knispel's illustration works for poems by poets, all painted in black and white, were presented in exhibitions in the Netherlands and Germany and aroused great interest. They attracted the attention of the anti-Nazi poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, who was exiled from Germany to Finland and returned from exile to Germany after World War II.
The influential German artist asked to meet Knispel so that he could illustrate his protest poem against the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Knispel, for his part, felt an urge to visit Auschwitz, and in 1957, at the end of the exhibition he organized as part of the Youth Festival in Moscow, in which he won a gold medal for his illustrations, he traveled to the death camp and other camps and was shocked.
A charred desert
He reported on this visit: "A charred desolation ruled the camp. As if the accumulated dust of time was not there to cover the remains of unknown fart-inducing objects that were scattered here and there. Desolation and orphanhood prevailed here... It was the first encounter with the naked, unmade-up reality. A shock that contributed To remove a little of the partitions of frustration that made me push the subject so charged into the subconscious."
But to Knispel's disappointment, before the meeting, Brecht died in 1957 and his actress wife Helena Vogel (the heroine of his plays "Mother Courage" and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle") gave Knispel the pages of the poem "Children's Crusade".
This project continued to be delayed. A fatal delay. Before Knispel completed the work, he was offered to participate in a tender for the creation of a monumental sculpture on a television station tower in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Knispel won the tender, moved to Brazil, performed the work he was given, according to the inclination of his heart, he respected and cherished the local people who were dispossessed of their land by Portuguese and Spanish conquerors.
First period in Brazil
Knispel stayed in Brazil for 6 years, worked and developed there as a local artist and stood out for his social connections with the Brazilian elite who were close to his political views. Many considered him a Brazilian artist. Among the new members who felt identification with his work and presented their poems in his exhibitions, was the world-renowned architect Oscar Niemeyer. The two became close friends and creative partners for decades.
Commissioned, large-scale works occupied Knispel and postponed the treatment of the illustration of Brecht's poem, until 1963. Then, when the work was completed, an impressive and respectful reception was organized for him and the joint work.
Brazilian celebration
The publication of the series of illustrations for Poem Brecht in Sao Paulo was a particularly festive event that teaches about Knispel's status among his new friends in Brazil. The paintings of the engravings were projected onto the walls of the houses next to the gallery and the actors of the "Arena" theater, accompanied by Kurt Weill's music (to Brecht's "Opera Begrusch"...) played the chapters of the poem in front of an enthusiastic audience that filled the streets. A real Brazilian celebration.
Knispel won the Sao Paulo Biennale Award for Graphics. Criticisms of the event stated that, contrary to the trend of abstraction that ignores the bitter content of Brecht's poetry, Knispel does not ignore the content when he comes to illustrate Brecht's most painful and roughest poem. He felt the subject deeply and tried in his own way to illustrate it with the same force and roughness as the poet. His talent for penetrating the poets' intentions was revealed again.
There is no doubt that the result is not easy to watch calmly. The gloomy illustrations of the exile and suffering of children powerfully fulfill the task: the commemoration of one of the most terrible periods in the history of our time.
The end of the good years
The good years suddenly came to an end. In 1966, the 6 years of Knispel's dream in Brazil ended. In this year, a military coup took place in Brazil, which caused Knispel to flee after he learned that the anti-communist military personnel had labeled him a subversive artist and asked to be imprisoned with his close friends.
Knispel returned to Israel with some of his works, and among them the illustrations he prepared for Poem Brecht. With the help of Brazilian funding, Knispel prepared in Israel in 1966 a Hebrew edition of the translation of the poem "The Crusade of Children" and in which a series of illustrations was presented which is considered to be the pinnacle of the artist's illustration works.
Ash Star
50 years later, the illustrations were shown in an exhibition held at the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa, and Knispel was given the honor he deserved there. The illustrations of Brecht's poems were joined by illustrations prepared by Knispel for the poem of an Auschwitz victim, K. Tsatnik, a gloomy writer who prepared a series of poems compiled into a bookAsh Star".
Following the publication of the Hebrew edition of the Iori Brecht album in 1966, the album came into the possession of the wife of the Jewish Holocaust writer who survived Auschwitz. K. Chetnik, He is the man who was exposed to the public in Israel following his dramatic testimony in the Eichmann trial.
This is where a twist in the plot develops. Knispel's attitude towards the Holocaust is an officer. Knispel was invited to a meeting with K. Tsatnik to discuss the possibility of accompanying his engravings with a new book of poems by K. Tsatnik "Star of Ashes". The manuscript was handed over to the artist and remained in Knispel's possession as an irreplaceable stone, until Azar Oz reviewed it. So, Knispel informed the writer's wife that he would not be able to accept the requested work "because the task is heavy on him". He explained that since he had not been to Auschwitz, he lacked the tools to deal with what he had done. Tsetnik defined as "another planet".
Guilty
Knispel hid behind the words "too heavy a task" but on another occasion he said that he was paralyzed for many years from referring to the Holocaust because of a sense of guilt. We tried to get down to researching this evasion.
Knispel said that his parents, who immigrated with him from Germany to Israel before the Holocaust, together with the other people of the old settlement, pointed an accusing finger at the Holocaust refugees, "You were like sheep to the slaughter" and the surviving refugees remained silent and did not reply. It was a jarring silence that prevented him from reaching and talking; Especially in the home of a family that immigrated from Germany before the gates of Israel were closed in 1935 by the British and many of their children perished in the Holocaust.
The immigrants, for their part, blamed themselves for being saved from the extermination and leaving most of the family members to their bitter fate. It was a crippling and frustrating situation.
Knispel returned in his memories to the beginning of his steps as a student at "Bezalel" and reviewed the introduction to the book that presented his 15 final illustrations on which the teacher Ardon wrote:The crown around and against the songs accompanies them as a brother and sister... and one gets the impression that the songs were expecting him". Ardon Niva"A young artist sets out with in his hand a few seeds of his land that he must plant... and the land of the painter Gershon Knispel is saturated with sorrow, agitation and rebellion. The book in front of us testifies: he is the one walking toward her and she is toward him".
'defeated'
K. Tsatnik did not give up on Knispel who continued to avoid the task of decorating his book. On the eve of Yom Kippur he knocked on Knispel's door, entered, locked the door and announced: "We will not leave here until you pass through Auschwitz with me" so the Auschwitz survivor began a marathon monologue that lasted until the next day at noon. Without a break without a glass of water and everything... on Yom Kippur.
The artist testifies to this with shaken words: "I was left defeated, helpless and close to losing my senses. Then everything began to take shape, his stories caused a resonance that penetrated to the depths. In the rhythm of his feverish, fragmented, stammering breath, he seemed to be spitting heart out of his body. As he emptied his bitterness that had accumulated in his gut. He was washed away In waves of cold sweat, and sometimes a sort of epileptic tremor passed through him."
Levan has no memory
Knispel described the details of the horrors: "The story about the Auschwitz orchestra left me terrified and broken. Everything began to invade my dreams when the Musalmans... appear as ghosts in my sleep and wakefulness. He saw in his mind's eye the wagons loaded with victims, the Kalges and their dogs, stood with them in line for the cruel selection, saw and smelled the The incinerators and the bodies of the murdered; and he did not forget the piles of battered and thrown shoes, and the glasses, on the gas chambers and gas boxes Tsaklon B. Details of a genocide terrible in its cruelty."
These details were recorded over the next few years with chilling precision. as if they were written in the blood of the artist's heart.
Knispel says that he felt that the obsessive running amok about which K. He choked on the story of Auschwitz and as if trying to catch up with the crazy pace of things, anxious not to omit anything from what he heard, he took a group of cardboard boxes, spread a chalk solution on it as a base for painting the entire surface with a layer of black ink, so as not to leave even a trace of the whiteness of the palette presenting the "other planet", And began to engrave on it the testimony of the survivor from the inferno who tells the story of the horror.
Wreck
Painting the events of the Holocaust made Knispel change the style of his paintings. In the "social realism" which directed its steps in the beginning to the documentation of distress as it is seen in everyday life, there was no response to the catastrophe that killed millions near and far, Jews and members of other nations. Realism is not enough to describe an unprecedented horror, a satanic plan that K. Chetnik promoted with meticulous fervor as someone who was saved from the fire of hell and survived a broken vessel, and was sheltered from fire.
The descriptions flooded the artist with endless images of horror that were piled on top of each other, like those shoes and glasses of people that were destroyed in crematoria and were reduced to ashes.
Another planet
In 1969, Knispel presented a colorful triptych called "The Other Planet" which was the first colorful reflection of what he had absorbed from his conversations with K. Chetnik From them he illustrated the "Star of Ashes". This triptych is in the collections of the Ghetto Fighters Museum.
the orchestra
A restorer of Knispel in Israel discovered that his views and the subjects of his work, with the exception of relief works commissioned by authorities and commercial entities, are not considered. He received a position in the Haifa Municipality and it is sad to state that for three decades until 1995, there was no demand for his work in Israel, Knispel was actually boycotted by the artistic establishment on the grounds His views that always deviated from the consensus. The lack of interest in his contribution to the commemoration of the Holocaust on the part of bodies like "Yad Vashem" is especially noticeable.
In 1995, Knispel was invited to present an exhibition in Brazil, he returned to São Paulo, the city that brightened his face and began to make a name for himself and prosper. In Brazil he created the enormous works of the Holocaust that this story now reveals to you.
Amazingly, only his Brazilian friends, his partners in the fight against tyranny and oppression, were kind to him and were interested in his thunderous work, including his response to the extermination of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. In cultural centers in São Paulo there are huge works by Knispel. In the Rubinstein concert hall there is a permanent display of a huge work featuring a Jewish orchestra. The spectators do not know that they are watching an orchestra of Jewish musicians in Auschwitz.
Survival trailer
The last huge project that Knispel prepared in Brazil, at the request of his friend, the chief rabbi of Sao Paulo, for the "Tan Yad" Jewish charity center was the work of 4 huge metal reliefs (28 square meters) dealing with Judaism following the Holocaust.
Each plaque bears a biblical verse that represents and describes a historical chapter in the history of the Jewish people, called the "Survival Chariot" and these are the chapters that Knispel and the Rabbi who initiated the commemoration chose to present together: Inquisition - Re-settlement in Tiberias - The Holocaust - The Revolt.
Struggles
A special exhibition was prepared by Knispel in Brazil to commemorate the struggles in South America and there he chose to present "Labyrinth" in its fifth version. and a series of illustrations he prepared in collaboration with his friend the architect Niemeyer.
the maze
This work was exhibited in Israel after Knispel's death and includes 12 huge works that refer to the horror of the Holocaust. The exhibition was held at the Bar-David Museum in Kibbutz Bar'am. Far from the centers of culture and display for the masses.
This is how the work was described by the curator Avi Ifergan who emphasized the essence of the change in Knispel's work: "The labyrinth is a monumental work consisting of 12 canvases attached to wooden panels in a cubo-futuristic style that depicts the hell of the Holocaust. A graphic description that was born in a meeting with K. Chetnik It is a desperate attempt to deal with an unparalleled horror, a kind of Jewish-Israeli Guernica under the influence of Picasso's work.
See embroidery details:
stages of destruction
In the performance there is a dynamic transition between all the stages of extermination, the gathering of the Jews and their removal in freight cars on trains, the sorting and the deception, the march to the gas chambers accompanied by an orchestra, the crematorium, the body cart and the electrified fences, all in a sharp transition from a realistic presentation to a pictorial abstraction. This work comes from the depths of the artist's soul.
In Israel, Knispel placed in one monumental sculpture related to the Holocaust the "Memorial of the Jewish fighter against the Nazis" which shows suffering and heroism in one piece.
Epilogue:
We saw a need and a right to present the character of Knispel as a fighting, opinionated and expressive Haifa artist, who devoted days and nights to telling the story of the Holocaust according to his values and won the respect he deserved... in distant Brazil. Unfortunately, the difficult statement that "there is no prophet in his city" has been proven once again.
More information about the monument "The Jewish Fighter in the Nazis" - in Yael Nitzan's article in Hai Pa - at the link:
Proud that the late gifted painter Gershon Knispel, a relative of my family.