14 October 17:30 for 18:00

Join the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in South Africa for an evening exploring the life and art of great contemporary artist, Samuel Bak in remembrance of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

The event will include formal remarks from ambassador of Lithuania to South Africa, Ambassador Rasa Jankauskaitė, a screening of the acclaimed film Samuel Bak: Painter of Questions, and a presentation by Dr Ute Ben Yosef, author of Art and Life: The Story of Samuel Bak.

Samuel Bak was born in 1933 in Vilna. His artistic talent was first recognised at an exhibition in the Vilna Ghetto when he was just nine. While he and his mother found refuge in a convent, his father and all four grandparents were killed by the Nazis and their local collaborators.

At the end of World War II, he fled with his mother to the Landsberg Displaced Persons Camp, where he enrolled in painting lessons. Bak studied art in Munich and later at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem after immigrating to the newly formed state of Israel with his mother in 1948. In 1956, he went to Paris to continue his education. He received a grant from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation to pursue his artistic studies. In 1959, he moved to Rome where his first exhibition of abstract paintings was met with considerable success. Since 1959, the artist has had numerous exhibitions in major museums, galleries, and universities throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States, including retrospectives at Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, and the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town. He has lived and worked in Tel Aviv, Paris, Rome, New York, and Luasanne. In 1993, he settled in Massachusetts and became an American citizen.

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