I have a family that has commissioned me to find all of the Jewish paintings I can find. He has given me no budget constraints. I’m not sure why he doesn’t have guidelines set up for me to follow; he just wants to amass a collection quickly.
I found an oil on canvas that was a Jewish painting called Jewish meeting. The artist was Amparo Cruz Herrera. The artist is Spanish and this work exuded grace. I liked it a lot. I purchased it for eight thousand dollars. My benefactor was happy with the purchase.
My client made no distinction between Jewish paintings that were of a religious nature and those that were only painted by a Jewish person. I bought a rare Leon Bakst that was dated 1910. His subject was a person in an exotic costume. I’m not sure where my client plans to display it.
The next Jewish painting I found for him was a cityscape in oil of a deserted house in Veroia. This painting only cost six thousand dollars. Veroia is a Jewish neighborhood in northern Greece. I thought that this painting was a little bit unsettling.
I found another good Jewish painting for my client. The title of the painting was Juedisches Oesterreich Jewish Austria and was created by Frank Ettenberg in 2004. The person that sold me the painting said that the painting evoked a feeling of the artist's state of being face to face with nationalism, his ethnic identity and an existential situation.
I found another Jewish painting I liked for four thousand dollars. The oil painting called Birds of Paradise was painted by Maurice Sterne. Sterne was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. He was the first person to have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He exhibited 174 paintings, drawings and sculptures.
I found a Jewish painting of a cat that sold for thirty five hundred dollars. The artist of this work was Wettingfeld Zarojewski. I could not find any other work from this artist at all. My client really liked it. He is also a cat lover in addition to being a collector of Jewish art.