Israel Kristal: Oldest Holocaust Survivor and Oldest Living Man

Backstory

When Israel Kristal died on August 11th, 2017, he had lived 113 years and 330 days.

As a young Polish-Jewish man, he had survived both the doomed Łódź Ghetto and Auschwitz; the murder of his first family at the hands of the Nazis; and resettlement to the nascent embattled Jewish state of Israel.

At the age of 113, just before his death, he celebrated his bar mitzvah. At the time, he had nine grandchildren and great grandchildren. Kristal had been master candy maker his entire working life. He literally brought sweetness into the lives of others.

Here is a link to a short and beautifully written tribute to this extraordinary ordinary man, written by Jordan Kutzik for The Forward.

Artist Statement

The web photos of Israel Kristal’s deeply aged face became seed crystals in my mind. The art images emerged and resolved themselves over a five-week period, after several other initial attempts at the subject. Because fine art has its source in the unconscious mind, words cannot fully explain what and where the imagery actually comes from and what it means.

That said, the collages reference Zen ink drawings that explore chance, nothingness, and pure abstraction; and Russian constructivism design that expresses revolutionary change without decorative elements. The artwork focuses on Kristal’s eyes that have seen so much of the mayhem of the 20th century but still remain soft and open.

Technical Notes

The five mixed-media collages were created on 8-inch-square archival watercolor paper that had been digitally printed with black-and-white patterns. The black-and-white photographic images were digitally printed on Epson cotton rag print paper. The adhesives were acid-free Grafix Art-Tac dry permanent sheets and archival grade PPA fluid acrylic medium. All the pigmented acrylic inks are lightfast.