Lithuanian-born
Arbit Blatas was a painter, sculptor, and opera stage designer whose works
are seen in museums, galleries, private international art collections, and
various public places the world over. An only child of Russian parents and
an accomplished painter by the age of 15, he left for Paris as a youth,
and at 21, became the youngest member of the group of French and emigre
artists that became known as the School of Paris. It was the Paris of Picasso,
Matisse, Braque, Dufy, Utillo, Soutine, Cocteau and many other friends and
colleagues, whose likenesses he captured in oil and bronze. These "School
of Paris" portraits, which became a major exhibition in Venice in 1982
and the Musee Bourdelle in Paris in 1986 now hang in the School of Paris
halls dedicated to Arbit Blatas of the recently opened "Museum of the
Thirties" in Boulogne-Billancourt outside Paris. Nearby, in the garden
of the Hotel de Ville stands his life-size bronze of the sculptor Jacques
Lipschitz; and in the Square Gaston Baty in Montparnasse in Paris stands
his bronze statue of his friend and fellow Lithuanian artist Chaim Soutine.
In 1941, he escaped the Nazis and settled in New York where, living a prolific
artist's life to the end, his gallery exhibits invariably received favorable
notice. Among the most celebrated are the paintings, lithographs, drawings
and sculptures in a series of works devoted to "The Threepenny Opera,"
which are being reexhibited as part of the Kurt Weill Centenary celebration
at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery in New York City from January
17 to 27, 2001. These works were previously exhibited at the Teatro Goldini
in Venice (1984), the Museum of the City of New York and the Goethe Institute
in Toronto (1986).
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He
is also well known for his 1979 "Monument of the Holocaust"-
seven bronze tablets in Venice's Campo del Nuovo Ghetto commemorating
the night in December 1943 when the first 200 of the city's Jews were
rounded up for deportation and eventual death. A second casting of
the work was dedicated in 1981 in Paris at the Shrine of the Unknown
Jewish Martyrs, and a third was installed by the Anti-Defamation League
in the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza facing the United Nations. In 1993,
on the 50th anniversary of the Deportation, the President of Italy
dedicated Mr. Blatas' sculpture entitled "The Last Train"
in the Ghetto. In addition, his black and white drawings introduced
the 1978 TV series "The Holocaust."
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story of the Ghetto of Venice and Mr. Blatas' monument to the
Holocaust victims are the subject of a book by the artist (book
cover shown at left) published in 1997 by the Edizioni Canova
with the support of the Steven and Alida Brill Scheuer Foundation. |
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In 1994, the
Grovesnor Gallery in London held an exhibit entitled "Arbit Blatas
and His World of Music and Theatre." A man of many talents, Mr. Blatas
also became a stage designer for opera, in collaboration with his wife Regina
Resnik. He designed nine productions altogether, among them: Elektra
(for the Teatro La Fenice in Venice), Carmen (in Hamburg), Salome
(for the Teatro Sao Carlos, Lisbon), Falstaff (for the Grand Theatre
in Warsaw), The Queen of Spades (for the Sydney Opera House, Australia),
and Falstaff (for Venice). Venice thus occupied a central place in
the artist's life - the city where he and Ms. Resnik
shared a second home is home to some of his most important works.
And "An Artist's Venice" (1997), his book of paintings which capture
the city's moods in the most vivid colors, shows that it was a very special
place indeed.
Mr. Blatas received many honors in his lifetime, among them: the Chevalier
de la Legion d'Honneur by the French Government (1978), later Officier de
la Legion d'Honneur (1994) for his contribution to French art; the
gold medal "Venezia Riconoscente" (Venice, 1980), and the
Medaille de Vermeil of the City of Paris (1987). |
