Romanian Israeli Judaica Oil Painting Blowing Shofar Western Wall Jerusalem

Dimensions: H: 27.25, W: 23.5 IN

Savu Petra Dan (1903 -1986) Genre: Judaica Subject: Religious Medium: Oil Surface: Canvas Country: Israel Dimensions: 20" x 16" x 3/4" Dimensions w/Frame: 27 1/4" x 23 1/2" Hand signed lower right

Savu Petra Dan (born 1903 in Bucharest, died March 16, 1986 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Romanian-Israeli painter.

Savu Petra Dan studied from Bucharest between 1926 and 1933 at the Kunsthochschule . He had an order as a court painter at Carol II. During the Second World War he was imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust from 1942 to 1945. In 1946 he was awarded a prize from the Romanian Ministry of Culture. He was able to sell pictures to the Bucharest National Museum . His state-owned paintings were also shown after 1945 and divided into different outposts of the National Museum. After 1958 they disappeared in depots and have been lost since the 1990s.

Dan emigrated 1961 for political reasons with great difficulties with his wife Thereza (1913-1976) to Israel . He had his first exhibition there in Netania . Dan was a productive painter and sold his pictures abroad. Dan moved to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1974 and lived in Frankfurt am Main since 1978. Dan initially painted expressively, but also surreal in later works. He raised the issue of concentration in the concentration camp.

Some years later he was engaged by King Carol II of Romania as his court painter and was awarded with the prize of state of the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Romania. In 1961 he emigrated to Israel and in 1974 he moved to Germany where he died in 1986 (Frankfurt am Main). Savu Petra Dan preferred oil-on-canvas paintings which were expressive in his early years, later they bekame more abstract and even surrealist. He also created portraits and compositions of landscapes but many of his works testify to deep sufferings and feelings, to the human struggle of life and death.

Due to his own very traumatic experiences during the Second World War in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen Savu Petra Dan created a series of impressionistic paintings titled f. e. “behind the barbed wire”, “please, don’t crucify me anymore”, “survivors of the concentration camp”, “mass grave” and “dictator”. These large scale oil-on-canvas paintings are his very personal witnesses of the Holocoust.

Dan was well-known in several countries. He sold more than 1.000 paintings f. e. to the USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. His paintings were exhibitioned in many galleries and art museums, such as the Helena Rubinstein Museum in Tel Aviv, Artist Festival and Exhib. Gardens. Famous Israeli people and Minister came to his exhibitions. TV, radio and newspapers often reported on him. Some exhibitions he had together with his wife, Tereza Dan, who was a painter as well. One of the greatest Israeli art critic wrote about Dan's works that these pictures are of more artistic worth than those of the famous painters Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Gericault whose paintings are exhibitioned in the Louvre-Museum in Paris. In Germany Savu Petra Dan is listed in the famous painters encyclopaedia of the German publishing house “Saur” (Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon).

Stefan Schulze: Dan, Savu Petra . In: General Artistic Glossary . The visual artists of all time and peoples (AKL). Volume 24, Saur, Munich, and others. a. 1999, ISBN 3-598-22764-7 , p. 62. [Communication from Ulrike Kühnel, Wiesbaden] Wiebke Peters: The rediscovery of a great painter , in: Jewish Voice from Germany , July 2014