Purim

Objet musée

---

Numéro d'inventaire : 01152
Titre : Purim
Dénomination contrôlée : Oeuvre d'art-gravure
Désignation de l'objet : "Purim": lithographie couleurs de Miron Sima, 1971
Matériaux : Papier
Techniques : lithographie
Dimensions : 24,8 cm x 19,0 cm
Mode d'acquisition : don
Source de l'acquisition :
Personnes/Organisations liées : Sima, Miron
Datation (période) : XXe siècle
Date de production : 1971
Provenance géographique : Israël
Provenance géographique : Israël
Informations historiques : The artist Miron Sima had a different approach to the role of Israeli art. He was one of very few artists who engaged intensively with the theme of refugees and immigrants. The theme also appeared in the works of Chaim Atar, Jacob Steinhardt and other artists, but not in as focused a manner as in the works of Sima. ... Sima began working on the theme of refugees in 1938, at first with figures of individuals and in a more realistic style. Afterwards he focused not only on individuals but also on groups, in a narrative context – the boat at sea, figures in various states of introversion, lethargy, despair; and in abstract form, with the aim of achieving a condensed representation of the situation. He described his goal thus: “I limited myself to two groups. One – bereft and apathetic, and the other – consumed by despair and encompassed by compassion”. Sima created scores of works such as these, continued working on the theme in the forties, and, in his words, sought to go beyond the episodic realism of the suffering individual and to express the moment “when a person ceases to be merely himself and becomes a purposive utterance of his fate”. The story of the “Exodus” stirred him, and he even left for Marseilles to meet the people who were to sail on it. He later described how this experience had influenced his work: “The cruel tragedy of the refugee’s condition – bad, without dignity, humiliated. And then I saw the refugees of the Exodus – stripped of their nerves, stripped of their physicality, stripped of the image of humanity, quivering bulbs, diagrams of grief and subject to their common fate – each of them destined to his despair, to his wrath, to his helplessness”. He created the final works in the series in 1947, and he chose the title “Refugees” (and not “‘Olim”, “Ascenders”) for his exhibition, which was shown at the Bezalel National Museum in Jerusalem in 1950. The critical response, of course, was: “All the paintings have a single theme: the ha’apalah, [the “ascent against the blockade”]. But Sima, for some reason, chose to paint only the sufferings of the people on the ship in the open sea; the heroic side of the ascent against the blockade seems to have passed him by. […] But – does Sima see only the suffering that is entailed in the Return to Zion? And where is the heroism that it entails?” http://www.museumeinharod.org.il/english/about/articles/land_of_refuge.html