Artist Name: Osias Hofstatter
Title: A family
Signature Description: Hand-signed lower right
Technique: Ink on paper
Image Size: 41 x 25 cm / 16.14" x 9.84" inch
Frame: The painting is framed
Condition: Very good condition with no tears, rips, wrinkles, repairs, wear, paint peelings or losses.
Artist's Biography:
Osias Hofstätter (Galicia, Austria-Hungary, 1905 - Israel, 1994)
Osias Hofstatter was born in 1905 in Bochnia, Galicia (historical and geographic region between Central and Eastern Europe), which was under the ruling of the Austro-Hungarian empire (Poland of today).
His father was a broker and merchant dealer. With the outbreak of the first world war, in 1914, his family moved to Vienna.
In 1915 they moved to Holland. Between 1919-1920 he studied in the Gymnasium in Frankfurt Germany.
In 1920 he moved back to Vienna and lived there until 1938. He worked as an accountant, cocoa trader and a merchant of other items.
In 1938, following the Anschluss, he was arrested with his family in Vienna. Hofstätter, his brother and his sister managed to flee. In November, he married Anna Shebestova and they settled in Brussels.
After the Anschluss he fled to Brussels where he was arrested and separated from his wife.
Following the German occupation, he was arrested and sent to the St. Cyprien and Gurs concentration camps. With the assistance of his brother and sister, who lived in Switzerland, he was released, and took refuge in Idron, on the Swiss border.
In August 1942, as he attempted to cross the border into Switzerland, he was apprehended and interned in the detention camps of Aigle, Wald and Birmensdorf.
In 1943, he was released through the intervention of the Unitarian Service Committee in Geneva, in order to allow him to study art. In Switzerland he painted the experiences of the German conquest.
In 1946, he returned to Vienna, where he was reunited with his wife.
In 1948, he returned to Poland and settled in Warsaw, where he taught art in a Jewish orphanage and worked as a newspaper graphic editor.
In 1957 he immigrated to Israel and settled in Holon.
Up until 1970 he worked as a night guard. He then moved to Netanya where he was focused on creating his art. In his last days he lived in Ramat Gan.
Most of Hofstatter's work were made in drawings. His watercolors and ink described figures, animals and hybrids in an expressive style.
His artworks have been displayed in numerous exhibitions in Israel and internationally.
Education
1942 Municipal Art School, Zurich
1946 Art Academy in Vienna
Awards and Prizes
1963 Municipality of Holon Prize, Holon
1968 Prize, Ministry of Education and Culture
1976 Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture, Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa
1981 Worthy Citizen of Ramat Gan Award
1991 Bank Discount Prize for an Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
1991 Sussman Prize for Artists Depicting the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
1991 Danziger Prize, Jerusalem
Solo Exhibitions
2018 Osias Hofstaeter - Two Faced, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art
2007 Osias Hofstatter - 41 Works on Paper, Ashdod Art Museum, Monart Center
Tova Osman Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1995 Exhibition in Memory of the Artist Osias Hofstatter (1905-1994), Yad Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
Oaias Hofstatter - Gathering in His Memory, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art
1992 Drawings, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
Solo Exhibition, 1938-1957, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
1990 Osias Hofstatter: Masterpieces from the Artist's Collection, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art
Panorama, The Municipal Museum ''Bet-Emanuel'', Ramat Gan
1989 Hofstatter: New Works, Tova Osman Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
Hofstatter: New Works, Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
Beit Yad Labanim, Ramat Hasharon
1988 Osias Hofstatter: Painting and Drawings, Yurek Art Galley, Ramat Hasharon
Tova Osman Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
Hofstatter: New Works, Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
Municipal Art Gallery, Smilansky Cultural Center, Rehovot
1987 Hamishkan Le'omanut, Beth Meirov, Holon
1986 Solo Exhibition, Turkish Railway Gallery, Be'er Sheva
Hofstatter: In Colour, Christie's Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
1985 Retrospective Exhibition of Osaias Hofstatter in Celebration of His 80th Birthday, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art
Yad Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
1984 Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
1983 New York, USA
1982 Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
1980 Mabat - Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1978 Hofstatter: Aquarelles and Drawings, Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
Hofstatter, Amit, Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1976 Hofstatter, Sarit Gallery, Tel Aviv
1974 Tel Aviv Art Museum
1973 36 Drawings by Hofstatter, The Camden Arts Center, London
1972 Welch Gallery, Salzburg
1971 Sao Paulo Biennale
1970 Osias Hofstatter - Solo Exhibition, Dugith Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1968 Museum of Modern Art, Haifa
Osias Hofstatter: Drawings, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1967 Osias Hofstatter - Watercolors, Dugith Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1966 Osias Hofstatter - Solo Exhibition, Dugith Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1961 Atalia 97, Tel Aviv-Yaffo
1960 Exhibition of Drawings, Ghetto Fighters' House, Kibbutz Lochamei Hagetaot
Paintings and Drawings, Bialik School, Holon
1958 Katz Gallery, Tel Aviv
Group Exhibitions
2019 Painting from the Museum Collection, Petach Tikvah Museum of Art
2017 Eyes, don't Haunt Me, Yair Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2015 Group Exhibition, Yair Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2014 Group exhibition, The David Yellin Hebrew Teachers’ State Institute, Jerusalem
Group Exhibition, Yair Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2008 In Conflict, Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem
2006 12 Artists - A Second Glance, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Raffi Lavie Collection, Mishkan Museum of Art, Kibbutz Ein Harod
2005 Etched Voices, Holocaust works of contemporary artists, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
2000 Group Exhibition, Hamishkan Le'omanut, Beth Meirov, Holon
1999 Shimshon Crystal / ''Thirty Years of Collecting Israeli Art on Paper'', The Painters and Sculptors Association, Tel Aviv
The Municipal Museum ''Bet-Emanuel'', Ramat Gan
1998 Israel - Entre Reve et Realite, Musée Juif de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium
1997 Exhibition of Paintings, The Municipal Museum ''Bet-Emanuel'', Ramat Gan
Group Exhibition, New Art Studio, Rishon Le Zion
1996 ''Hester Panim'' - Hiding the Face, Yad Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
Artists Messengers of Peace, Artists' House, Jerusalem
1995 “Mirror/Mirro”, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Paper Works, Tova Osman Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1994 The Printer's Imprint: Twenty Years with the Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1989 Israeli Artists Draw the Bible, Bible House, Tel Aviv
Portrait, Traveling Exhibition, Israel
1988 Modern Drawing - New Approaches, Haifa Museum of Modern Art
1986 The Hot and the Cool in Israel Art: The ''Hot'', Haifa Museum of Modern Art
1985 Black Prints, Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem
1984 ''Aquarelles 84'', Ella Gallery, Jerusalem
Catastrophe, Jerusalem Theater, Jerusalem
1981 The Woman Image in Israeli Art, Traveling Exhibition, Israel
1979 Herzliya Museum
The Israeli Grafotec, Shaar Zion Library, Beit Ariella, Tel Aviv
Artist's Choice, Tel Aviv Art Museum
1977 One Hundred Years - One Hundred Plus Artists, Yad Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
Debel Gallery stand, International Art Fair, Tel Aviv
1976 Award Ceremony of the 28th Dizengoff Prize for the Art of Painting and Sculpture, Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa
1974 Autumn 1974, Yad Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
1973 Yodfat Gallery, Tel Aviv
1972 Symbols and Imagination, The Painters and Sculptors Association, Tel Aviv
Old and New in the Museum Collection, Yad Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
1971 Israeli Exhibition, São Paulo Art Biennial, San Paolo, Brazil
1970 Israeli Painters 14, Traveling Exhibition, Israel
1969 A Leap of Faith, An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Sculptures from Israel, State University of NY, Albany, New York, USA
Israel on Paper, San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California
1968 Drawings Exhibition, Art Gallery, Holon
1960/ 1962/ 1963/ 1965 / 1967 General Exhibition, Art in Israel, Tel Aviv Art Museum
1967 Artists in Israel for the Defense, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion
Holocaust Paintings, Yad Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
1965 Graphic Works by Contemporary Israeli artists - New Acquisitions, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1962 Artists' House, Jerusalem
1958 First Decade Exhibition for Painting, Ramat Gan
Israeli and International Painting and Sculpture, Shulamit Gallery, Jaffa
Additional Information:
When Osias Hofstatter arrived in Israel in 1957 and laid down his wandering stick, dams opened releasing a powerful stream of creativity which seeped into the artistic consciousness of the country. Researchers and art critics as well as museum curators define his work as being close to expressionism and the atmosphere as being directly influenced by his personal history.
"Hofstatter's art expresses qualities of anxiety, worry, nightmare and panic. There is a tension between the anxiety aroused by the Holocaust and the anxiety due to religious existentialism".
The stigma of a painter of the Holocaust, and his preference for using black ink as a symbolic choice channel the universal work of Hofstatter into a narrow and limited path. A closer look at the paintings which mirror the world of the artist but also express the spirit of the era, make it necessary to free oneself from existing conventions and even to understand the message behind his words: "Perhaps you'll understand that a 'hasid' who looks like a 'hasid' is not a 'hasid'."
Hofstatter places the human being in the center of his universe. Over his complex morphology, which is of secondary importance to the artist, are planted, as an artistic act, innumerable essence of two major kinds: one the pure painting which serves as a means for placing the figure within the given frame (mostly paper), the other, to express the sum total of sometimes contradicting truths of which this essence is composed.
In the process of creation in which the dimension of time is of secondary importance, beginning in the Sixties, a formula begins to crystallize, by means of which Hofstatter disconnects his works form every connotation, time and place. The landscapes to "populated" urban scenes which express, perhaps, the artist's attachment to "the place", but quickly disappear in order to focus most of the attention on the actors of Hofstatter's tragi-comedy in which laughter and tears blend with the joy and sadness of life. Hofstatter's protagonists are no heroes but neither are they nonentities.
The penetration into paper, the etching, the continuous dialogue between the form and the background which characterized his works in the years of untiring search (1950-1970) gave way to a predetermined division between the background which serves as a minimalist stage and the actors in the theater of life. In this theater, the mythology lost its glory, one does not measure royal raiments and the box of illusions is empty. Out of the estrangement blossom ties between the figures, out of generous motherhood sprout signs of disconnection but also signs of freedom, of a new beginning. The human being, whose gender to Hofstatter is of no importance is presented in the nude juxtaposed to the depth of the soul, its nonentity and its greatness.
Hofstatter represents the complete artist, a man of knowledge, a sceptic philosopher who never tires of examining the mysteries of life. A humanist and aesthete who touches the most delicate fiber of human pain. He examines suffering but does not wallow in it, and succeeds to a great extent in rising above it. Thus he managers to express universal feeling and thoughts, whose concept of time is infinite.
Yoav Dagon (Herzliya Museum of Art Director 1981-1993)
The Hofstatters’ estate was transferred to Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art which exhibits a permanent collection of his works.
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