UTW 19

Father with daughter in the Warsaw ghetto

Art: 1993
Media: Ink with colored pencil
Size: 34 ½ inches H x 24 1/2 W [87.6 x 62.2 cm]
The frame was a gift of The Museum of History & Industry, Seattle.
Inspired by a Warsaw Ghetto photo

The wings were drawn at the ornithology lab, Burke Museum.

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The following is a poem by Robert Desnos, which came to mind some years after I  learned about Desnos some years after I did the drawing:

J'ai reve tellement fort de toi -
J ai reve tellement fort de toi
J ai tellement marché, tellement parlé,
Tellement aime ton ombre
Qu'il ne me reste plus rien de toi,
Il me reste d'etre l ombre parmi les ombres
D etre cent fois plus ombre que l'ombre
D etre l'ombre qui viendra et reviendra
      dans ta vie ensoleillee
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I have dreamed so strongly of you
I have walked so much, talked so much
So much I have loved your shadow
That there now remains for me nothing more of you,
It remains with me to be a shadow among shadows
To be a hundred times darker than the darkness
To be the shadow that will come and come again
     into your sun blessed life.

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Shared, above, from The Selected Poems of Robert Desnos.
Translated by Carolyn Forche & William Kulik. Published by Ecco Press, NY 1991.  Desnos, a French surrealist poet; novelist; film, art, record & literary reviewer; songwriter; radio playwright and writer of 3,000 radio commercials, was born in 1900.  He died of a high fever and typhus at Terezin in 1945, after liberation, having previously been imprisoned at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other Nazi death camps for his anti-Nazi Resistance activities.

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There is a poignant blurb about him in the book The Last Album – Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz, by Ann Weiss. Published by Norton, 2001.
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Also see:
UTW 54: Sorrows of Love (Desnos portrait)
Other Holocaust Art – 2016, Desnos (linocut portrait)