Please join us online on Wednesday 2/15 at 12:00 PM EST for “Seven Murals by Philip Orenstein (b. 1938) – A French-Jewish Perspective on France During World War II”, Philip Orenstein and Dr. Nadine M. Orenstein in conversation.
Inspired by a visit to his birth country in the 1990s, American artist Philip Orenstein created seven large-scale murals about the French complicity in the persecution of Jews in France during World War II. At that time, the French government had not admitted it had taken part in the persecution. The murals have been shown in various galleries and museums in the United States. In 1999, William Zimmer wrote in the New York Times, “Mr. Orenstein’s method involves combining poignancy with the determination that the viewers not miss the story. To this end, Mr. Orenstein skillfully, and wittily, employs the look of today’s splashy graffiti.” The works have not yet been shown in France.
Featuring a lecture by Paris-born child survivor and visual artist Philip Orenstein, professor emeritus of art at Rutgers University, followed by a conversation with Dr. Nadine Orenstein, Drue Heinz Curator in Charge of the Department of Drawings and Prints in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Register HereBorn in Paris, France, in 1938, Philip Orenstein had survived Nazi persecution as a young boy hidden with his brother by a gentile family. After World War II, in 1949, his family emigrated to the United States. He became a visual artist and professor of art at Rutgers University in New Brunswick (NJ), where he had majored in physics.
In 1967, the artist designed an inflatable chair, which was included in an exhibition organized by the New York Architectural League that travelled to Paris and London. A model of the chair is now in the permanent collection of the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, and another is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The event is part of the monthly series “Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression,” which is organized by The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, New York.
Thank you for joining as well as spreading the word!
All best wishes,
Rachel Stern
Director and CEO
Fritz Ascher Society
121 Bennett Avenue Suite 12A
New York, NY 10033
T +1 (917) 363-0056
https://fritzaschersociety.org
