Samuel Bak

Samuel Bak studied at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and Beaux-Arts de Paris. The recorded working language is French, Italian and Yiddish. The field of work recorded is painting. Work by Samuel Bak is recorded in the collections of National Gallery of Canada. Distinctions recorded are honorary citizen of Vilnius.

• Name — Samuel Bak שמואל בק • Born — 12 August 1933 • Birthplace — Wilno, Second Polish Republic • Field — Painting, Author • Training — Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, École des Beaux-Arts • Spouse — Josee

Samuel Bak was born in Wilno (Vilnius), Second Polish Republic, on August 12, 1933. Bak was recognized from an early age as having artistic talent. He describes his family as secular, but proud of their Jewish identity. By 1939, when Bak was six years old, World War II began, and the city of Vilnius was transferred from Poland to Lithuania. When Vilnius was occupied by the Germans on June 24, 1941, Bak and his family were forced to move into the ghetto. At the age of nine, he held his first exhibition inside the ghetto. In 1943 the poets Avrom Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski invited the young Bak to participate in an exhibition organized in the ghetto. Sensing that their end is near, the poets decide to deposit the Pinkas, the official record of the Jewish community, into the hands of Bak in the hope that they both survive. Over the next two years, Samuel fills the page margins and empty pages of the Pinkas. Bak and his mother sought refuge in a Benedictine convent where a Catholic nun named Maria Mikulska tried to help them. After returning to the ghetto, they were deported to a forced labour camp, but took shelter again in the convent where they remained in hiding until the end of the war. By the end of the war, Samuel and his mother were the only members of his extensive family to survive. in July 1944, his father, Jonas, was shot by the Germans, only a few days before Samuel's own liberation. As Bak described the situation, "when in 1944 the Soviets liberated us, we were two among two hundred of Vilna's survivors—from a community that had counted 70 or 80 thousand." Bak and his mother, as pre-war Polish citizens, were allowed to leave Soviet-occupied Vilnius and travel to central Poland, at first settling briefly in Łódź. They soon left Poland and traveled into the American-occupied zone of Germany. From 1945 to 1948, he and his mother lived in displaced persons camps in Germany. He spent most of this period at the Landsberg am Lech DP camp in Germany. It was there he painted a self-portrait shortly before repudiating his Bar Mitzvah ceremony. Bak also studied painting in Munich during this period, and painted A Mother and Son, 1947, which evokes some of his dark memories of the Holocaust and escape from Soviet-occupied Poland. In 1948, Bak and his mother immigrated to Israel. In 1952, he studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. After serving in the Israel Defense Forces, he continued his studies in Paris from 1956 at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts He spent various periods of time in Rome, Paris, Switzerland and Israel. In 1993, he and his wife Josee moved to Boston, where they have settled permanently and became a U.S. citizen. Bak continues creating new art and exhibits. • Illustration — Bak in his Massachusetts studio In 2001, Bak returned to Vilnius for the first time since his youth and has visited his hometown several times since then.

Samuel Bak was born on 12 August 1933 in Vilnius. Bak held the nationality of Israel, United States and Italy. Bak was educated at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and Beaux-Arts de Paris. Bak worked as painter, stage painter, engraver and theatre designer, and the authority record catalogues a further 1 occupations under the same name, among them artist. Bak worked in French, Italian, Yiddish and English. Bak is placed by the collections within surrealism.

• Samuel Bak, Paintings of the Last Decade, A. Kaufman and Paul T. Nagano. Aberbach, New York, 1974. • Samuel Bak, Monuments to Our Dreams, Rolf Kallenbach. Limes Verlag, Weisbaden & Munich, 1977. • Samuel Bak, The Past Continues, Samuel Bak and Paul T. Nagano. David R. Godine, Boston, 1988 • Chess as Metaphor in the Art of Samuel Bak, Jean Louis Cornuz. Pucker Art Publications, Boston & C.A. Olsommer, Montreux, 1991. • Ewiges Licht (Landsberg: A Memoir 1944-1948), Samuel Bak. Jewish Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, 1996. • Landscapes of Jewish Experience, Lawrence Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston & University Press of New England, Hanover, 1997. • Samuel Bak – Retrospective, Bad Frankenhausen Museum, Bad Frankenhausen, Germany, 1998. • The Game Continues: Chess in the Art of Samuel Bak, Pucker Art Publications, Boston & Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2000. • In A Different Light: The Book of Genesis in the Art of Samuel Bak, Lawrence Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston & University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2001. • The Art of Speaking About the Unspeakable, TV Film by Rob Cooper. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, 2001. • Between Worlds: Paintings and Drawings by Samuel Bak from 1946-2001, Pucker Art Publications, Boston, 2002. • Painted in Words: A Memoir, Samuel Bak. Pucker Art Publications, Boston & Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2002. • Samuel Bak: Painter of Questions, TV Film by Christa Singer. Toronto, Canada, 2003. • New Perceptions of Old Appearances in the Art of Samuel Bak, Lawrence Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston & Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2005. • Samuel Bak: Life Thereafter, Eva Atlan and Peter Junk. Felix Nussbaum Haus & Rasch, Verlag, Bramsche, Osnabrueck, Germany, 2006. • Return to Vilna in the Art of Samuel Bak, Lawrence Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston & Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2007. • Representing the Irreparable: The Shoah, the Bible, and the Art of Samuel Bak, Danna Nolan Fewell, Gary A. Phillips and Yvonne Sherwood, Eds. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2008. • Icon of Loss: The Haunting Child of Samuel Bak, Danna Nolan Fewell and Gary A. Phillips. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2009. • Retrospective Journey into the art of Samuel Bak. Ute Ben Yosef. The South African Jewish Museum. Cape Town, 2013. • Told & Foretold: The Cup in the Art of Samuel Bak, Lawrence L. Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2014. • From Generation to Generation: Paintings by Samuel Bak, Lawrence L. Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2016. • Just Is: New Paintings by Samuel Bak, Gary A. Phillips and John K. Roth. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2018. • Ner Ot: Candles in the Art of Samuel Bak, Lawrence L. Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2019. • Remembering: The Gifts of Samuel Bak, Lawrence L. Langer and Ayala Tamir. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Holocaust Museum, Houston, 2019. • When the Rainbow Breaks: HOPE in the Art of Samuel Bak, Henry F. Knight. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2022. • An Unimaginable Partnership: The Art of Samuel Bak and the Writings of Lawrence L. Langer, Lawrence L. Langer. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, 2022. • Figuring Out: Paintings by Samuel Bak 2017-2022, Lawrence L. Langer and Andrew Meyers. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2022. • Art & Life: The Story of Samuel Bak, Ute Ben Yosef. Pucker Art Publications, Boston, and Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2023.