(HOLOCAUST)
Archive of the original art created by <<Daniel Bennett Schwartz>> for ...

(HOLOCAUST)
Archive of the original art created by <<Daniel Bennett Schwartz>>


for ‘Genocide,’ the 1981 documentary directed by Arnold Schwartzman and narrated by Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor, that went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Film. Thirty drawings and paintings, almost all signed by the artist. Sizes range from 19 x 28 inches (48 x 71 cm) to 9.5 x 15 inches (24 x 38 cm). * Accompanied by: Additional related notes, newspaper articles and correspondence between Schwartz and the film’s director and producer concerning the development of the artwork.

(New York: 1980)
Schwartz’s intense involvement in producing this artwork is expressed in a letter he penned to Arnold Schwartzman, the film’s British director (20th May, 1980): “I want you to know how much it meant to me to be asked to make these drawings and paintings for your film… It has been for me, the most personally rewarding project I have ever been given… It is not often that my feelings have been engaged so profoundly while working… I can only hope that the work I’ve contributed contains an iota of what I wanted it to be, because, in the end, the subject is beyond illustration.” Born in 1929 in New York City, Daniel Bennett Schwartz’s art is that of the Realist School. He was invited to collaborate on the film Genocide by Marvin Hier, director of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and the producer of this ground-breaking documentary. Exhibited: Leo Baeck Institute, New York, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Kristallnacht. Exhibition-catalogue included in the lot, entitled: “What are we Remembering?” Includes an essay by Schwartz discussing how he came to produce this suite of searing paintings: “I had never in my career been offered a project as sober and challenging as this. I [felt] there is no way to ‘illustrate’ the Holocaust. You need a Goya, a Rembrandt or a Kollwitz… then perhaps. But there was no way I could not take on this assignment… I realized I required a new medium.” Provenance: From the studio of the artist.
Schwartz’s intense involvement in producing this artwork is expressed in a letter he penned to Arnold Schwartzman, the film’s British director (20th May, 1980): “I want you to know how much it meant to me to be asked to make these drawings and paintings for your film… It has been for me, the most personally rewarding project I have ever been given… It is not often that my feelings have been engaged so profoundly while working… I can only hope that the work I’ve contributed contains an iota of what I wanted it to be, because, in the end, the subject is beyond illustration.” Born in 1929 in New York City, Daniel Bennett Schwartz’s art is that of the Realist School. He was invited to collaborate on the film Genocide by Marvin Hier, director of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and the producer of this ground-breaking documentary. Exhibited: Leo Baeck Institute, New York, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Kristallnacht. Exhibition-catalogue included in the lot, entitled: “What are we Remembering?” Includes an essay by Schwartz discussing how he came to produce this suite of searing paintings: “I had never in my career been offered a project as sober and challenging as this. I [felt] there is no way to ‘illustrate’ the Holocaust. You need a Goya, a Rembrandt or a Kollwitz… then perhaps. But there was no way I could not take on this assignment… I realized I required a new medium.” Provenance: From the studio of the artist.