Art Gallery

The Kaddish Series
Rita Briansky

January 14 to February 28, 1997

I was born in Poland and immigrated with my family to Canada before the war. I was four years old. This exhibition is a result of a personal odyssey—a return to my roots in Poland. Although I was aware that many of my relatives had perished in the holocaust, I knew little else, and I felt the time had come to make my journey into my past. My destinations were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Crakow, Warsaw, Grajewo (my place of birth), and Stockholm. In Crakow, in the Rema Cemetary, stands a large wall of Jewish gravestones, constructed by Polish students from memorials desecrated during World War II. This wall of broken tombstones became for me a symbol of the tragic losses and fragmentation of a people. In Grajewo, my town, there stood the silent witnesses of the massive tragic events. An apartment building now stands on a hill beneath which lies the destroyed Jewish cemetary. A lone tree, sole survivor of the original cemetary, stands as a sentinel on guard. A lovely green meadow grows nearby, on the site where the Grajewo ghetto stood before the inhabitants were murdered and the evidence burned to the ground.

My one surviving cousin lives in Stockholm. His entire family, together with the whole Jewish community of the Bransk ghetto died in Treblinka. I came back to Montreal feeling very sad and heavy-hearted but satisfied that I had gone. Upon my return I began my second journey - into myself, my conscience, and with the only way I knew how, began expressing what I felt. The results are these 18 paintings which I have titled "The Kaddish Series". They are roughly divided into three categories:

* I begin with the Polish landscape, which I found so appealing, yet which filled me with so many ambivalent feelings. The first painting is called "Departure" showing the back of a man disappearing into a field.
* Portraits of some of my relatives, who are meant to represent all the victims - integrated into the land. This section ends with "Witness", depicting the burning of a ghetto.
* Six paintings on the theme of the Crakow wall, symbolizing the fragmented lives and ending with an empty prayer shawl. I complete the series on a note of hope, with a frontal view of a woman, (perhaps it is me) and Polish fields in the background. I call this oil "Return".

Rita Briansky received her training at the École des beaux-arts de Montreal, and at the Art Students League of New York. She studied painting under Anne Savage and Alexander Berkovitch, and now teaches painting at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts. Over the past twenty years she has had numerous solo and group expositions in Montreal and across Canada, and her work can be found in many permanent collections.

The Kaddish Series Rita Briansky

The Kaddish Series
Rita Briansky