KALMAN ARON (1924–2018)

  

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Kalman Aron, an artist and Holocaust survivor whose portraiture allowed him to better understand his experience in concentration camps, has died at ninety-three, according to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. By trading sketches of Nazi guards and their families for bits of food, Aron would eventually endure seven concentration camps, the first of which he arrived at when he was sixteen. After the war, he received a scholarship to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and earned a master’s degree. He became a celebrated American portraitist after moving, in 1949, to California, where he continued to paint for the rest of his life.  

In isolation, Aron was still a trenchant observer of and empathizer with those around him. A painting titled Mother and Child that Aron made in 1951 after settling in the United States revisits a memory from that time. The painting, which is now displayed at the entrance to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, depicts a mother cradling a baby, their faces almost one, their bond seemingly inseparable.

Aron gained wider success in the 1950s and was ranked among the “100 outstanding American artists” in Art in America in 1956. During this time, he branched out from gray, haunting imagery and started to paint more vibrant landscapes and portraits, eventually making work commissioned by Ronald Reagan, André Previn, and Henry Miller.

“In the camps, I looked at and studied people,” Aron told Magee. “The Holocaust gave me an understanding of people that most people won’t understand.”

In isolation, Aron was still a trenchant observer of and empathizer with those around him. A painting titled Mother and Child that Aron made in 1951 after settling in the United States revisits a memory from that time. The painting, which is now displayed at the entrance to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, depicts a mother cradling a baby, their faces almost one, their bond seemingly inseparable.

Aron gained wider success in the 1950s and was ranked among the “100 outstanding American artists” in Art in America in 1956. During this time, he branched out from gray, haunting imagery and started to paint more vibrant landscapes and portraits, eventually making work commissioned by Ronald Reagan, André Previn, and Henry Miller.

“In the camps, I looked at and studied people,” Aron told Magee. “The Holocaust gave me an understanding of people that most people won’t understand.”

https://www.artforum.com/news/kalman-aron-1924-2018-238231/