Artist name: Pinchas Shaar
Name of the piece: King and Joker
Technique: lithography
Details: signed and numbered
Dimensions: 50x70 cm.
About the artist:
Pinchas Shaar was born in Poland as Pinchas Schwartz in a traditional home but with a free education. His father owned a carpentry shop, and was the chairman of the Jewish Carpenters Union in Lodz. His mother was a housewife, and was a relative of the painter Yankel Adler. As a teenager he was a member of the Hashomer HaTsair movement. He painted and wrote during these years, and Yankel Adler, who visited his home, liked the paintings. He graduated from gymnasium in 1938 in Lodz, and went on to study painting with Władysław Staszminski, one of the great Polish painters.
When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the Polish army in the 18th regiment. During the battles, he was captured by the Germans, but managed to escape to territory that was under Russian control. And his mother and sister stayed in Lodz to guard the family property. When the condition of the mother and sister worsened, Shaar, along with his father and brother, decided to return to the ghetto in Lodz, to try to rescue the mother and sister. They managed to sneak into the ghetto, but were unable to get out, and had to stay there. Shaar worked in the ghetto as an artist in the 'Statistica' office, and in this context he illustrated the Lodz ghetto stamps. When the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, Sha'ar managed to get the family into a group of about 500 families that were left behind to clean up the ghetto. After about a month and a half, they were taken by train to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and then to the Koenig-Wosterhausen camp where they stayed until their liberation by the Russian army.
After World War II he came to Germany in 1945, where he lived in a displaced persons camp. In 1947 he moved to Munich, where he joined the Yiddish Theater as a scenery painter.
In 1947 he went to Paris, where he studied for two and a half years at the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere.
Shaar visited Israel for the first time in 1949, and stayed in Israel for four months. He then immigrated to Israel in 1951. He continued to divide his time between Paris and Israel.
In 1956 he signed a four-year contract with Benzit Gallery. At the same time he painted scenery for plays in the Chamber Theater. In 1959 he ordered a mosaic for the entrance to a Reform synagogue in Chicago, Shalom Center, made entirely of the stones of the land, on the subject of Elijah the prophet's ascension to heaven.
In 1963 he used the income from his exhibitions in the United States to buy a studio in Jaffa, where he opened a permanent exhibition.
In 1975 Shaar moved to live with his family in Manhattan, where he lived until his death.
Source: Art Business
