Max Weber (1881-1961) is one of America’s most important twentieth century artists. The first American cubist, Weber translated the modern European aesthetic into a truly American style that evolved during the roughly sixty years of his career. He developed a personal expressionism in his mature phase that was influential for the development of Abstract Expressionism.

Although Weber is best known for his innovative modernism, he is also acknowledged as one of the leading American artists of Judaic themes.

This exhibition provides a look into the mind of this modern American artist, what and who some of his influences were, and what might have motivated him to create many works relating to Jewish culture and religion.

Mayer Kirshenblatt was a self-taught artist living and working in Toronto. Born in Apt (Opatów in Polish) in 1916, he arrived in Canada in 1934 at the age of seventeen. After apprenticing to an electrician and cobbler in Poland and working in a sweatshop in Toronto, he painted houses and eventually opened his own wallpaper and paint store. He retired in 1977.

In 1990, Mayer began to paint everything he could remember about his hometown and his childhood there. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, his daughter, began interviewing him in 1967 and has continued to do so until the present.

In this exhibition you will be able to see forty of Mayer's works, as well as read, see and hear him talk about Jewish life in his hometown of Apt.

Dr. Martin Kieselstein was born in Romania in 1925, during the Second World War, the area belonging to Hungary. In 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz, together with all the Jews of his hometown.

Only his father and he survived. His mother and my sister died while doing forced labor.  He never learned whether they perished during the cold winter, hunger, or the beatings of the Nazis.

In 1959 he came to Israel and worked there as a geriatrician in Jerusalem, because I saw it as my duty to help elderly people, especially those who were Holocaust survivors. In recognition of my activities I was awarded the "Yakir Yerushalyim," ("Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem") award.

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, at the age of fifty, created a series of thirty-six embroidered pictures, illustrating the stories of her childhood in a small village in Poland, and her survival during the Second World War. She used the skills she had--her powerful memory and eye, and her remarkable sewing technique--to tell her own story, in her own way. She decided that she wanted her daughters to see what her childhood had been like, by creating a picture of it. She had no artistic training, but she was extremely skilled in sewing and embroidery, which she had started doing as a little girl. She knew she could stitch the picture she wanted to create, but she wasn't confident that she could draw it, so she asked her daughter, Helene, to draw for her the picture she wanted to make: of her house, the neighbors' home, and her family. "But, Mom," Helene said, "I don't know what your house looked like! You'll have to do this yourself!"

In this exhibition, you can see Esther's wonderful embroidery, which is sure to impress you as you revel in Esther's creativity and imagination.

Bill Farran has produced many linocut representations of the once-extant wooden synagogues of Eastern Europe.

"My wooden synagogue series has become a labor of love. It brings together many aspects of myself: my love of history and geography, my love affair with Jewish genealogy, my love of art, and the love that I have for my wife who helps me research and write...."