Art Category: Remember

These works of Ms. Bornstein’s are a testament to the Holocaust. Growing up as an American Jewish child of immigrant parents during WWII, Bornstein was deeply affected by the anti-Semitism and horrors of the Second World War, which seemed to reveal themselves with unfathomable horror as she matured into womanhood. In 1950, Ms. Bornstein worked on a kibbutz in Israel where much of her parents’ family had fled in the 1930’s as Hitler began his meteoritic and terrifying rise to power. In these paintings, Bornstein does not abandon her sense of whimsy. Yet, it is uniquely and terrifyingly combined with death and the suffering of its victims. Perhaps Bornstein’s contribution to this difficult genre is outstanding and unique in its understated poetry of horror and sadness. Ms. Bornstein uses her consummate draughtsman ship in spontaneous drawing, many done with her eyes shut and her left hand, to release the core of understanding. A strange figure with a heart shaped head cradles a figure in a blackened shroud covered with thorns. A bird-like figure is splattered with red paint in mid-flight. Deep blue bones tied with fragile string hang in a red sky. Feathers commemorating the dead lie along a brick-like wall with broken chinks leaking red….A rabbi in a clown’s mask stands before a prone body. A woman embraces a figure with the face of both monster and skeleton. Here Bornstein unleashes the full force of her unique imagination in a tour de force of haunting juxtapositions, emotions, and symbolism. Her palette is a saturated red and scumbled white. Her line and brush evoke a depth and passion. Bornstein has created an indelible tribute to the tragedy of the Holocaust. She has managed to portray something of the ineffable, which only her particular genius and style can manifest with the brilliant poignancy of her unflinching and singular imagination. Rebecca Gabriel