Testimony

Boris Lurie & Con­tem­porary Art from Eastern Europe

    Exhibiton running from June 14 to November 17, 2024.

    Participating Artists

    Alexander Adamov
    Agata Bogacka
    Edka Jarząb
    Adam Kozicki
    Sergiy Petlyuk
    Nadya Sayapina
    Jana Shostak
    Elena Subach
    Michał Zawada
    Anna Zvyagintseva

    The exhibition is made possible by

    Boris Lurie (1924-2008) was a Russian-American artist who lost many family members and his girlfriend in the Holocaust. Together with his father, he survived four labor and concentration camps. His significant artistic work, created after emigrating to the USA, was an expression of his suffering right up to the end. It bears testimony to the violation of human rights on an unimaginable scale. The enduring relevance of Boris Lurie's radical art stems from this stance. Documenting it is the task of an exhibition held across four rooms to mark the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth.

    In cooperation with the Boris Lurie Art Foundation in New York, the Neues Museum in the "City of Human Rights" has been able to enlist curator Paulina Olszewska. A collaborator of the renowned Galeria Studio in Warsaw, Olszewska has invited 10 artists from Belarus, Poland and Ukraine whose works echo Boris Lurie's experiences in the present day. War, political injustice and human rights violations are a sad reality in the heart of Europe, as the war in Ukraine and the situation at Belarus demonstrate.

    "The dialogue bet­ween Boris Lurie's early work and the con­tem­porary works of artists from Belarus, Poland and Ukraine plays out on vari­ous levels. Formal simi­larities can be de­tec­ted, while at the same time the simi­larity of the messa­ges con­veyed is surprising." - Paulina Olszewska ­

    Three Countries in Focus

    Ukraine and Belarus became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Together with Russia, the three states formed the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), from which Ukraine withdrew in 2018. Belarus and Ukraine struggle over their relationship with Russia and have seen very different develop­ments in recent decades. Poland, on the other hand, joined the European Union on May 1, 2004.

    UKRAINE
    • 2007-2010 Yulia Tymoshenko becomes Prime Minister.
    • 2010 Election of Viktor Yanukovych as President – orientation towards Russia and at the same time closer ties with the EU
    • 2011 Imprisonment of Tymoshenko on charges of abuse of office
    • 2013-2014 Euro Maidan Protests. The protests on Kyiv's Independence Square (Maidan) were triggered by the Ukrainian government's refusal to sign the EU Association Agreement. This was accompanied by demands for President Yanukovych to resign and for Tymoshenko to be released. The protests end with Yanukovych fleeing the country and being deposed.
    • March 18, 2014: Occupation of Crimea by Russia. Putin declares its annexation to the Russian Federation (an annexation in violation of international law).
    • Further escalations follow: Pro-Russian militias in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass fight with Russian soldiers against Ukrainian troops and volunteer militias.
    • 2018 Ukraine's withdrawal from the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States)
    • 2019 Election of Volodymyr Zelensky as President of the Republic
    • Russia's open war of aggression against the whole of Ukraine since February 24, 2022
    BELARUS
    • 1994 Election of Alexander Lukashenko as President, who is protected by Russia
    • 2020 Fraudulent presidential election, which Lukashenko wins. Mass protests then break out, which are violently suppressed. Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya calls for new elections and is forced to flee to Lithuania.
    • Fall 2021 marks the high point of flight to the EU via the "Belarus Route".
    • On February 24, 2022, Russian troops also cross the Ukrainian border from Belarus.
    • Constitutional reform in February 2022: Russia is permitted to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
    POLAND
    • In 2001, the twin brothers Lech Kaczyński (2005-2010 President) and Jarosław Kaczyński found the PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – Law and Justice) party. It stands for nationalist, conservative Christian values and an anti-EU stance.
    • August 2015 PiS's Andrzej Duda becomes President. In the following years, Poland experiences a marked shift to the right and a dismantling of the democratic rule of law.
    • December 2017 Election of Mateusz Morawiecki from the PiS as Prime Minister
    • December 2023 Change of government: the electoral alliance Koalicja Obywatelska (Civic Coalition) wins the parliamentary elections. Donald Tusk is elected Prime Minister and puts the government back on a pro-European course.

    Biography Boris Lurie

    July 18, 1924 Birth in Leningrad as the youngest of three children of the Jewish couple Ilja and Schaina Lurje

    1925 Moves to Riga, attends the German-language grammar school

    Oct./Nov. 1941 Ghettoization of 30,000 Jewish citizens of Riga

    Dec. 8, 1941 Murder of mother Schaina, sister Jeanna, childhood sweetheart Ljuba and grandmother in the Rumbula massacre

    1941-45 Lenta and Salaspils labor camps and Stutthof and Buchenwald concentration camps

    April 11, 1945 Liberation from the Buchenwald subcamp Magdeburg Polte

    1946 Emigration with father Ilya to New York, USA

    1950 First solo exhibition at the Barbizon Gallery, New York

    1958-61 Various exhibitions at New York's March Gallery, an artists' cooperative on 10th Street

    1959 Foundation of the NO!art movement, together with Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher

    1964 Death of his father Ilya Lurje

    1990s Work on his memoirs, as well as the novel House of Anita

    2003 Publication of the poetry collection Boris Lurie: Geschriebigtes / Gedichtigtes

    Jan. 7, 2008 Death in New York. Boris Lurie is interred in HaCarmel Cemetery in Haifa, Israel.

    2010 Establishment of the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, which has since looked after Boris Lurie's artistic legacy