Aviva Blum & Wojciech Cieśniewski

This exhibition presents a dialogue between two artists: Israeli painter and printmaker Aviva Blum and Polish painter Wojciech Cieśniewski. Belonging to two separate generations and thus differing in their experiences of history from the world war II. They were brought together by an unusual coincidence, and then found they shared the same faith in the power and therapeutic role of art.

In one of his paintings, Cieśniewski painted three girls sitting on a bench in the Jewish Children’s Home that was established after the war in Otwock, a town that had a large Jewish community before the war. The 14-year-old girl holding a cat in her hands is Aviva Blum. By a rare coincidence, the painting reached Blum, who has the original photograph that inspired the painting. “I’m alive, and I’m also an artist”, wrote Blum to Cieśniewski and his Polish patrons.

This is the second exhibition in the Life, After All series of exhibitions by Blum and Cieśniewski; The first one was presented in Poland at 2023, and the current (2024) one is taking place in Jerusalem.