Poland in Israel

The exhibition, curated by Tama Krudo Weiss, is the third instalment of the "Life, After All" series, after a successful debut in Otwock in 2022.

Aviva Blum creates paintings and graphics in Jerusalem, and Wojciech Cieśniewski in Warsaw. The paths of these two artists crossed 2 years ago thanks to an exhibition of Wojciech Cieśniewski's paintings organized in Otwock as part of the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Otwock ghetto. The artist then showed paintings from the series " Life, After All ", in which he uses pre-war and post-war photographs of former Jewish residents of Otwock. One of the works at the exhibition was "Spring of Nations 1948", inspired by a photo of three teenage girls living in the orphanage. As it turned out, among the girls in the photo was the painter Aviva Blum, whose mother Luba Bielicka-Blum was the director of the orphanage. Blum learned about Cieśniewski's exhibition and the painting directly inspired by her post-war photo from information about the exhibition published on the Internet. The meeting of both artists resulted in the idea of ​​a joint exhibition.

In Jerusalem, Wojciech Cieśniewski also presented new paintings created after the tragic events of October 7, 2023. The exhibition included, among others, a portrait of Alex Dancyg, a Polish-Israeli historian born in Warsaw, kidnapped from his home in Nir Oz on October 7 and taken to the Gaza Strip. Alex's family took part in the exhibition.

The Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Tel Aviv took honorary patronage of the exhibition.