Sculpting the Light: Avant-Garde to Auschwitz and Beyond. Moissey Kogan (1879-1943)
I am delighted to inform you that I have been invited to give an online lecture about Moissey Kogan: Sculpting the Light: Avant-Garde to Auschwitz and Beyond. Moissey Kogan (1879-1943), to the New York-based Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art as part of its monthly series, Flight or Fight. Stories of Artists Under Repression, generously sponsored by Allianz Partners. The talk is scheduled for Wednesday, 4 August 2021, 17.00 GMT(+1); 18.00 CET; 12 noon EST.
For more on this free event, please visit: https://fritzaschersociety.org/exhibition-event/moissey-kogan/ To register for the event, please visit: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2pEobW10SyGiM475FP-DGw
Sculpting the Light: Avant-Garde to Auschwitz and Beyond. Moissey Kogan (1879-1943)
Moissey Kogan was an innovative, influential sculptor-craftsman and printmaker, whose career straddled the European avant-gardes of the first half of the 20th century. A cosmopolitan Russian Jew, whose work was marked by his interest in Jewish mysticism and theosophical beliefs, Kogan looked to non-European cultures and ancient sources, in common with many of his contemporaries in Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris, to root his avant-garde experimentations and revivals of ancient techniques, in what were considered more authentic means of expression.
On the day Adolf Hitler came to power, Kogan fled Berlin and returned to his home in Paris, forced to leave behind him many of his key works in the care of dealers and museum collections. He would be obliged to watch powerless as his work was seized by the Nazis, only to be vilified in the infamous Entartete Kunst show of 1937, and the related exhibition, Der ewige Jude. In hiding in Paris and associated with the Résistance, the sculptor would finally be arrested by the Vichy police and transported to his death at Auschwitz.
This talk will discuss Kogan’s artistic positioning within the European avant-gardes and his preoccupation with transcendence and light. In stark contrast, it will consider the consequences of the Nazi looting of his work for the task of reconstructing his oeuvre and reclaiming his career from unjustified obscurity.
The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, Inc. re-discovers artists, whose careers were interrupted or destroyed by the Nazi terror regime, and who themselves were persecuted, ostracized or banned. International collaborations on exhibitions, research initiatives, and publications in print and/or digital media introduce the work of these artists to an international public. Its work commemorates their artistic achievements and initiates an active dialogue about individuality and artistic integrity in response to conditions of extreme duress and to political tyranny.
For more on the Fritz Ascher Society, please go to fritzaschersociety.org
For information on the lecture series, Flight or Fight. Stories of Artists Under Repression, including forthcoming events and recordings of past lectures, please visit https://fritzaschersociety.org/flight-or-fight/
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If you would like to know more about donating to, or sponsoring, the Moissey Kogan Catalogue Raisonné Project, please see our Support the Project page.
Featured image: Moissey Kogan, relief, artificial stone, 1913; formerly Museum Folkwang Essen. Confiscated in 1937. Now lost. Photographer
unknown.