Dora Holzhandler Catalogue 2011

Dora

Holzhandler

goldmark

Photo: George Swinford

Dora Holzhandler始s beautiful paintings of lovers, family groups, solitary contemplatives, mothers and children and people at home and in the marketplace, are at once movingly intimate and universal in feeling.

Philip Vann

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front cover:

Mother and Children in Holland Park

oil on canvas, 2009, 75.5 x 61 cm

Catalogue price 拢10

Dora Holzhandler

Dora Holzhandler

Essay by Philip Vann

Goldmark Gallery 2011

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Lovers Asleep in Winter oil on canvas, 2009, 91 x 76 cm

frontis: 68.

Lady with Flowers pastel, 2002, 25.5 x 20.1 cm

A Total Yes To Life: The Art Of Dora Holzhandler Philip Vann

Dora Holzhandlerʼs beautiful paintings of lovers, family groups, solitary contemplatives, mothers and children and people at home and in the marketplace, are at once movingly intimate and universal in feeling. For myself, and many others, contemplating her art feels like a kind of liberating home‑coming, an awakening to the pristine nature of who we really are. Its dynamically affirmative atmosphere – one which also fearlessly embraces lifeʼs sorrowful poignancies and its transience – has been summed up well by the art historian Sister Wendy Beckett: ʻDora Holzhandler grasps life and celebrates it. She sees us clearly; for her all is sacred, all is aflame with divine power, even sorrow, even death.

She offers to life here a total yes.ʼ A total yes offered to life is the sonorous note struck throughout Doraʼs paintings. This celebratory note (which reminds me of the Jewish toast, LʼChaim1 – the Hebrew term, meaning ʻTo Lifeʼ) resounds in Doraʼs oil paintings of lovers emparadised in each otherʼs arms in bedrooms of opulently

embroidered patternings (subtly intricate miracles, on the artistʼs part, of intuitive Op Art design). It can be heard in her portrayals of mothers and children in gardens of Eden‑ like fecundity, and in her gouaches of rabbis studying ancient holy texts in plain wooden studies of scintillating darkness.

This music of the spheres, as it were, reverberates in a large landscape depiction of a circle of Wordsworthian figures, dressed in white, dancing, amid hosts of daffodils, in ʻsparkling waves in gleeʼ2 And this note sounds in her self‑portrayal as a woman depicted not so much arranging a vase of, say, lilies or chrysanthemums as communing with the ineffable beauty and mystery of their living forms and colours – in the spontaneous freedom of the present moment – in what a critic has called Doraʼs ʻfrail, diaphanous watercolours which seem to express her innermost emotionsʼ3 (the latter medium she also finds perfect to evoke the moment of abandon or egolessness of naked embracing lovers).

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Ode to Daodils by Wordsworth oil on canvas, 2006, 99 x 89.5 cm

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67.

Lady with Bouquet on the Beach pastel, 2005, 42.5 x 38.4 cm

All her pictures are distinguished by a luminously fresh perception of the world in which no distinction is seen between the sacred and mundane, the workaday and sublime. Speaking about the genesis of her making art, Dora says that ʻthe beginning of a picture is very important. You have to be in quite a meditative state. Itʼs very magical. You have the empty canvas. Once the picture has begun, itʼs the question of just finding it. The picture is telling you what to do, as it were. Itʼs a conscious process, that, say, this red doesnʼt work, so youʼve got to do something about it.

The job is to make it right and to get back to where you started, but with a finished picture.

When I paint something Iʼve seen fifty years ago, itʼs the same moment recreated. The beginning of the picture, the moment of inspiration, is reliving the actual moment. In that way, a person never changes. The moment is the truth.ʼ Dora Holzhandler was born in Paris in 1928.

Her parents, Sehia Holzhandler, a handbag‑ maker, and her mother, Ruchla Rochman (of whom Dora keeps some photos of her

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dressed in the florabundantly decorated Polish folk costume of her youth), were Jewish refugees from Warsaw. Many of her paintings are inspired by childhood memories – being fostered in her early years by an affectionate Catholic farming family in Normandy until she was about five, her return (ʻa great shockʼ, she says) to live with her poor, extended Jewish family in Belleville in Paris, and then the move in 1934 to live in Dalston in Londonʼs East End. Her Eastern European Jewish familial roots, and her French origins – reinforced by her liberating, post‑War discovery of the art of the Ecole de Paris, the work of Modigliani, Soutine, Chagall, Matisse and Picasso, as well as the writing of, among others, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Colette and Prévert – permeate her paintingsʼ atmosphere to this day.

A painting of Bathers – showing her mother and another lovely, dark‑haired young woman bathing in a pond or lake of rippling turquoise pellucidity, surrounded by orbs of luscious green vegetation, an egret resting on the waters – ʻcould actually go backʼ, Dora says, ʻto the stories my mother told me about her youth: it could be Poland in the summertime.ʼ What the great Polish‑Jewish novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904‑1991) wrote in his 1978 Nobel Prize Lecture helps clarify the background to some of Doraʼs paintings – of subjects such as black‑garbed Rabbis with unsurpassably sweet countenances studying the Kabbalah against calligraphically painterly backdrops of ʻoutrageous lyricismʼ4 – figures perhaps (partly) unconsciously reminiscent of Doraʼs beloved maternal grandfather (ʻZaidaʼ, in Yiddish), Solomon, who accompanied his infant granddaughter on storytelling walks in

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the Parisian park of Buttes Chaumont, and who was later to perish in Auschwitz – and, in one wildly expressionistic gouache, an equally Rabbinic‑looking humble rag picker discovering vibrantly coloured remnants in piles of shtetl detritus, like jewels of wisdom uncovered in a world of heart‑rendingly bare simplicity: ʻThe truth is that what the great religions preached, the Yiddish‑speaking people of the ghettoes practised day in and day out. They were the people of the Book in the truest sense of the word. They knew of no greater joy than the study of man and human relations, what they called Torah, Talmud, Musar, Kabbalah. The ghetto was not only a place of refuge for a persecuted minority but a great experiment in peace, in self‑discipline, and in humanism. As such, a residue still exists and refuses to give up in spite of all the brutality that surrounds it.ʼ It was poetically appropriate that in 2007, the National Theatre in Warsaw should so profusely illustrate its programme of a play by Isaac Bashevis Singer – whose writings have so inspired Dora over the years – with illustrations of paintings by Dora. Although she has never visited the Poland of her parents and grandparents, it is as though her ancestral background transcendently illuminates her paintings. The compilers of the Warsaw programme intuitively sensed the affinity between the two creators. As Dora has said to me several times, making positive reference to her background: ʻThe apple never falls far from the tree.ʼ Uprooted as an impressionable young child from her idyll in rural Normandy, Dora was simultaneously introduced to new realities – Parisian and Jewish. Being ʻplungedʼ suddenly into ʻthe strangeness of life in Paris . . . in a

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Bathers oil on canvas, 2005, 100 x 75 cm

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Mother and Children in St Ives oil on canvas, 2007, 126 x 75 cm

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Sabbath Meal oil on canvas, 2007, 59.5 x 52 cm

poor Jewish familyʼ, has helped her, she believes, look objectively at what it is to be Jewish. While, on the one hand, she considers Jewishness her inheritance, in another respect she views it with detachment: ʻitʼs still a sort of theatre for me. Thatʼs one reason I paint these pictures, I suppose to explain it to myself.ʼ

Thus her painting of a Sabbath Meal – in which the family is presented, with primordial precision, around a pristine table, set sparingly with candelabra, dishes and ritual accoutrements – has an air of theatrical detachment about it; its naïve yet intuitively sophisticated use of perspective looks back to the way Seder meals are portrayed in

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Lovers in Paris oil on canvas, 2010, 44.3 x 34.2 cm

medieval Jewish manuscripts, beautifully illustrated Haggadot from medieval Spain and Germany. From the Art Deco‑style light fitting to the costumes and coiffures of the devout, middle‑class figures, the setting suggests a Jewish household (anywhere in Europe) of perhaps the mid‑1930s.

Each figure – from white‑haired grandparents at right and left, to the tiniest offspring with

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their backs to us, whose legs are seen (an endearingly observed detail) to dangle above the ground – is seen in his or her proper place within the familial hierarchy, and within the overall compositionʼs mandala‑like form, in which the rectangular table‑top is set within a field of patterned reds and greens (a sacred space, like a Persian carpet, demarcating the grounds of Paradise), itself set within a tiled background of reverberating squares and

crosses. Countenances here of grandparents, parents and children, are recognisably distinctive as poignantly individualised characters yet the faces appear touchingly too as (literally) rounded archetypes symbolising the universal nature of human relations.

In this picture, the crescent moon, illuminating bare wintry trees, and the starlit sky, are visible through two windows, like cosmic theatre sets beyond the roomʼs interior setting. The heavens thus are seen to illuminate the picture. Yet the celestial luminosity pervading the picture is evident also in the brilliant (slightly blue‑tinged) field of light which is the tablecloth, in the bowls of golden chicken soup nourishing the family, and also in the flames emanating not only from the Sabbath candles but also from the Menorah, the eight‑branched golden candelabrum standing on a green tablecloth under one of the windows. It is Chanukah (the Festival commemorating the rekindling of lights in the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BCE, following its heathen desecration), and the Menorah appears both as a tree in a meadow and (with no qualitative shift) as the golden Tree of Life in a verdant paradise. In this moment of illumination, there is a re‑ kindling of innocence and a return to the Garden of Eden within the heart of home.

A clue to Doraʼs portrayal of people comes from a remembered childhood sensation, ʻa sort of bliss that sometimes comes over me when all the world seems simply one great toy box and everything is tiny and delightful – people are simply lovely dolls with real clothes, real hair . . . the sky is real, the clouds and the flowers. But it is still a lovely toy; of course I am one of the dolls.ʼ

Over the years Dora has returned often to her native Paris. Whereas she thinks affectionately of England being ʻlike an overgrown gardenʼ, she says she likes ʻthe French way for things to be neat, orderly, everything in its place. The philosophy is neat. I try to do that in the paintings.ʼ In 1946 Dora obtained a French visa and went to stay with her auntʼs family near Paris. She attended a literature course at the Sorbonne and studied drawing at La Grande Chaumière. Her oil painting, ʻLovers in Parisʼ, shows young lovers against an abundantly reiterated backdrop of grey houses whose windows appear like countless blue eyes hallucinatorily transfixing the spectator. Even though the lovers appear to be soaring above this panorama, paradoxically they seem blissfully grounded in the cityscape. Dora has spoken of Chagallʼs ʻfloatingʼ subject matter which ʻthen goes onto another level, almost like surrealism, whereas I always keep my feet on the ground.ʼ The erotic sensuousness of Doraʼs female nudes, and her ripe appreciation of domestic pleasures, find their parallels in the art of Renoir and Colette. Colette once wrote: ʻI am tasting all the joys for which I was created.ʼ This delight in being alive here and now – far removed from hedonism – is close to the Jewish view, as expressed in the Talmud: ʻA Man is to give account in the Hereafter for any permissible pleasures from which he has abstained.ʼ As such, Jewish and French nuances in Doraʼs paintings are perfectly wedded.

In 1947, having fallen seriously ill with typhoid fever, Dora had to return home from Paris to London. She soon recovered, and in 1947 was accepted as a student at the Anglo‑French

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Art Centre in Londonʼs St. Johnʼs Wood, where a small painting she did of anemonies was much admired by the painter Victor Pasmore. Such visiting tutors, leading avant‑ garde artists, recognised the innate naïveté of Doraʼs art, leaving her more or less alone to find her own path. While acknowledging that she has been inspired by art from many traditions – including Persian miniatures, Oriental watercolours, the paintings of the Douanier Rousseau and Modigliani – she emphasises her own radical self‑discovery as an artist, saying, ʻThere are definitely rules in art. But I discover them and these are the answers. Here in my paintings are the rules Iʼve found.ʼ After about a year at the Anglo‑French, she met George Swinford, a fellow pupil. They married in September 1950; in 1996, Dora said: ʻWe have always talked to each other about art and religion, our long loving conversation has lasted forty‑seven years.ʼ In November 2010, Dora and George attended the Opening in London of a Retrospective of artistsʼ and studentsʼ work emanating from that amazing yet brief post‑war cultural efflorescence at the Anglo‑French Art Centre.

In the mid 1950s, Dora began to study Buddhism, ʻwhich made me more of a mystic and a conscious student of religion. I was always interested in Judaism and painted many Jewish subjects, but studying it from a more esoteric point of view has helped my understanding. In a way, Buddhism has brought me back to Judaism. Buddhism says to seekers that itʼs only a raft to reach the other shore, and then to be discarded; itʼs not to do with worshipping Buddha or being clinging. It educates the mind to be non‑ grasping, happy and accepting. Now, as a

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Buddhist, I can really enjoy being Jewish.

Thereʼs a paradox there!ʼ She also feels temperamentally drawn to Chassidism, a mystical Jewish movement founded by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1700‑1760). Chassidism rejects highbrow asceticism in favour of redeeming the present moment through ecstatic prayer, and through mindfulness towards all activities – eating, drinking, dancing, love‑making and, not least, work. Dora acknowledges that in so many respects Chassidism and Zen Buddhism have arrived at startlingly similar insights and conclusions. Thus in Doraʼs paintings of such seemingly mundane subjects as sitting under a dryer at the hairdressers, or sweeping the floor at home, or buying flowers from a stall in Portobello Road Market (about a mile from where she lives in Londonʼs Holland Park), what is illumined is the blissful ordinariness of participating in everyday tasks with a lucid, open mind.

Her study of counter‑cultural and modern spiritual literature – ranging from Aldous Huxleyʼs study of visionary perception and LSD‑transfigured ways of seeing, The Doors of Perception (1954), through Allen Ginsbergʼs poetry and Jack Kerouacʼs Buddhist‑Catholic novels of life on the open road, to essays on the mystical path by a Catholic monk, Thomas Merton (with special reference to Zen Buddhism), and also the writings of the Tibetan Lama, Chögyam Trungpa (her one‑ time spiritual mentor at the Samye Ling Tibetan Buddhist Centre near Eskdalemuir in Scotland) – has confirmed many of the personal discoveries made by Dora over the years, which in turn have had a transfiguring effect on her art.

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The Flower Stall in Portobello Road in Spring oil on board, 56 x 45.7 cm

ʻAll my paintings have esoteric secrets in themʼ, Dora says. In her painting of Friday Night Lovers, the semi‑naked lovers are portrayed in modest pose, not actually touching though touchingly at one with each other, lying on (and simultaneously, in quiet ecstasy, soaring above) a bed with white sheets and pillows. These are deliciously

decorated with swift calligraphic curlicues of purple and yellow. The bed is set within a carpet of profoundest Prussian blue, beyond which is an outer border of alternating black and white checks, for Dora a most numinous patterning (one of her earliest memories in her Normandy childhood is seeing a floor of such a design). An angel floats over them,

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Friday Night Lovers oil on canvas, 2010, 75.8 x 61 cm

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blessing their return to a state of blissful reconciliation with their original nature, as enjoyed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (before the Fall). The picture on the wall of a palm tree against a pink sky is another clue to the near‑Eastern locale of the original Eden, and no doubt to the habitation of this Orthodox Jewish couple – literally, and symbolically, the Holy Land.

The bright Sabbath Candles on a side table to the coupleʼs left, have been lit on the Friday evening by the woman of the household to usher in the Sabbath, the festive day of rest and celebration. The illuminated candles here embody the atonement of the male and female principles as described in the perennial teachings of Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah (or ʻTraditionʼ), in which Gan Eden (Garden of Eden) is described as the beginning and end of Creation. Dora has been much inspired by reading extracts from the Zohar (translated into English), which is known as ʻthe textbook of Jewish mysticsʼ.

These supreme Kabbalistic writings, which appeared around 1300 (partly in Hebrew, partly in Aramaic), were compiled from a variety of sources by Moses de León of Granada, who died in 1305. The Zohar takes the form of an interpretation of the Torah, or Old Testament Books of the Law. It is a profoundly beautiful and accessible meditation on the mysteries of God and the universe, and the destiny of mankind.

According to Kabbalah, it is because of Adam and Eveʼs striving towards independent ego‑ existence that a split has happened between the En Sof (the Divine Nothingness, or God without End) and the Shechinah (the Indwelling Spirit, or God made manifest or immanent in the world). Only when the

individual commits him or herself to a whole and holy life can the En Sof (known in terms of the male principle) be reunited with his Bride, the Shechinah (the female principle), and Creation redeemed in a kind of mystical marriage. This universal story of the reconciliation of the En Sof and the Shechinah is the ʻesoteric secretʼ underlying the painting of Friday Night Lovers, in which the couple are seen to be enjoying the flowering of a timeless moment of vibrant stillness, a peace beyond understanding.

Musical analogy is useful in helping us appreciate such compositions. It is as though the elaborately and intricately designed components (each with a distinctive individual melody) of such pictures combine to form a kind of polyphony – conjuring up the atmosphere of overall harmony in each painting. Writing in the American newspaper The Christian Science Monitor in December 1997, Christopher Andreae quoted Dora as saying: ʻEverything in a picture is very meaningful to me. Subjects are starting points, but what matters is the actual painting, and the note that it hits.ʼ Andreae comments, ʻThe musical analogy is apt. Many of her paintings have the deceptive simplicity of songs.ʼ Over the years, Dora and George have travelled widely – in Europe, North America, India and the Far East. In 1987, they visited Israel for the first time, staying in Eilat and Jerusalem. She stresses that ʻart is not travelogue... . For the artist, interior exploration is what matters.ʼ In Israel, she re‑ encountered her own archetypes, her childhood, herself. The fluid non‑linearity of gouache, she discovered, was especially suited to evoking the Jewish world, the

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incantatory rhythms of synagogue interiors and people at prayer, the richly nuanced, vivacious sombreness of traditional Jewish markets and homely settings.

In 2002 Dora was granted an audience with the Dalai Lama of Tibet. In November of that year, she made the long, arduous journey with her husband George and two of their granddaughters Tara and Eve to Dharamsala in India, where they met up with Doraʼs eldest daughter Amalie. The family then had an audience with the Dalai Lama. Dora says, ʻThe Dalai Lama said to me, “I understand you wanted to ask me a question”, so I went ahead. That was very amusing, because I went all the way to meet the Dalai Lama to ask him about Jewish mysticism! I asked him about the connection, the similiarity between Jewish mysticism and Tibetan Buddhism, and His Holiness said, “not only in the essentials but also in the practice, itʼs quite similar.” Heʼs a marvellous person. Like a friend. And George and I got a mutual hug – so that means if I shout or scream at George it doesnʼt matter! Very good.ʼ Describing herself as ʻa mystic, proud of my Jewish originsʼ, Dora is fascinated by the ʻperennial philosophyʼ underlying the great sacred traditions of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, far removed from what she sees as the divisive fundamentalism that appears to scar the attitudes (towards other faiths and beliefs) of so many self‑defined religious people today.

In her warmly affectionate and incisive portrait of her friend, Sister Wendy Beckett, the Catholic nun and art historian – in which vibrantly decorated rugs on the psychedelically patterned floor appear like cosmic eyes peering into the heart of the

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universe – Christian icons of angels and Madonna and child hang on the stand alongside a thangka (a Tibetan Buddhist embroidered silk tapestry); antique Buddhist sculptures stand on one side table; on another, tiny painted sculptures by Dora of a Jewish family look as though they have just walked out of a shtetl story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. On the table, alongside Doraʼs own painted ceramics containing fruit and flowers, is not only a volume of a history of art by Sister Wendy but also, just visible, books on Jewish Kabbalah and Zen Buddhism. In all the religious iconography and literature so effortlessly arrayed throughout the picture, we may glimpse something of the range of conversation, with reference to art and mysticism, enjoyed that day between Dora and Sister Wendy, at Doraʼs home, over coffee.

Dora is the mother of three daughters – Amalie, Hepzibah and Hermione – and recalls that during their early childhood in London and then rural Scotland (where the extended family lived in a large country house near Dumfries, with a beautiful walled garden full of roses), she loved to paint in the afternoons while they slept or rested. The renowned art critic Eric Newton wrote perceptively in the Guardian in 1962, ʻone knows at once that one is in the presence of a temperamental primitive . . . her method of painting is that of the pattern maker, oriental in origin, colourful as a Persian illumination, always brilliant but never harsh. These are pictures invented by a mother but painted by a child – a sophisticated but immensely amiable child.ʼ The novelist Edna OʼBrien has written in similar vein: ʻAll of Dora Holzhandlerʼs paintings possess an ineffable tenderness, they make us recall our childhoods, our

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Portrait of Sister Wendy Beckett oil on canvas, 2000, 76.5 x 61.5 cm

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113.

Lady with Cat watercolour, 1999, 25.5 x 20.4 cm

myths, our roots, and if we have severed from these things, they make us long for them in a palpable way. Dora is that rare thing – a mother and child in one, as an artist she captures the apparent simplicity of life and infuses it with a depth I find eerie.ʼ Dora says, ʻTo me Paradise is a garden. My first picture of that subject was of a lady with a little child in a garden, probably about 1960.

Iʼd been reading a book, with Preface by Jung, called The Secret of the Golden Flower. I felt inspired to paint a picture of this lady holding a sunflower and a little child by the hand.

Really that is what these garden pictures express in a way, some sort of secret, some realisation this lady, this mother has about life being like a golden flower.ʼ

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In Doraʼs recent large painting, Mother and Children in Holland Park (2009), the imperturbably serene mother and daughter (who wear dresses of marvellously elaborated geometric design) and baby (with its amusingly alert, blue‑eyed open regard) appear vast in perspective compared with details such as a background church, buildings in the grounds, a peacock, a fountain and the blossoming trees.

Innumerable coloured dots on the grass evoke a heaven of wild flowers sparkling on the lawn. The predominant scale of the human figures here – who are framed and sympathetically succoured, as it were, by two over‑arching trees full of pink blossom, either side of the family group – shows that for Dora it is out of the essentially empty yet endlessly

fertile primordial human mind that everything that can be imagined in nature flows.

The way that each detail in the painting is delineated with such sharp clarity, without recession or shadow, may be understood in the light of Aldous Huxleyʼs perception that ʻin nature, as in a work of art, the isolation of an object tends to invest it with absoluteness, to endow it with that more‑than‑symbolic meaning which is identical with being.ʼ Dora calls the process of painting ʻa very strange thing. You have the thought – Iʼll paint, say, a lion. If you do it too consciously, it doesnʼt look right. Somehow you have to be in a state of meditation, where the thinking is deeper. I read somewhere that [the great French naïve painter Henri] Rousseau used to get frightened by his tigers and ran out of the room. Thatʼs how art is.ʼ Certainly, in Doraʼs watercolour of Lady with Cat, the green‑eyed marmalade cat has an expression of most

alarming sagacity. Similarly, in her paintings of women looking into a bedroom mirror, the countenance that looks out at us is, each in its own way, radically surprising, joyously intimate, awe‑inspiring even: the reflection of the subjectʼs true nature, a spacious glimpse perhaps of the face, as mystics describe it, we wore before we were born.

In our troubled world, and the current cultural climate in which an overly cerebral, narrowly prescriptive attitude towards art and life often predominates, Dora Holzhandlerʼs rare, innocent art is welcomed and appreciated by many viewers, who find themselves responding to her paintings with a smile of compassionate self‑recognition.

Philip Vann is the author of Dora Holzhandler, a monograph on the artist published by Lund Humphries, London and The Overlook Press, New York in 1997.

He is the author of Face to Face: British Self‑Portraits in the Twentieth Century (2004), and several books on modern British artists.

Notes LʼChaim! To Life! The Jewish Year in the Art of Dora Holzhandler was the title of an exhibition at the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow, 1994.

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2 phrase from the 1804 poem by William Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud.

ʻChildhood Memories of Parisʼ (15th May 1992), Fealdman noted that ʻHolzhandler has recently been taking a fresh look at Paris, particularly at those areas she knew as a child. . . . One cannot help being captivated by these magical works, rendered with such warm feeling and with such scrupulous care.ʼ a phrase used by the French painter George Rouault (1871‑ 1958) to describe the use of broad, rapid, unpremeditated expressionist notation in his pictures.

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Barry Fealdman writing in the The Jewish Chronicle, 30th October 1987. In a later Jewish Chronicle review, headed 3

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102.

Girl by the Sea

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watercolour, 1984, 28.3 x 26.5 cm 101.

Couple Walking by the Sea watercolour, 1985, 31 x 29.4 cm

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Girl with Parrot in Cage watercolour, 1985, 28.2 x 24.5 cm

100.

Buddhist Monk watercolour, 1977, 31.6 x 25.4 cm

61.

A Pot of Flowers pastel, 2003, 45.5 x 43.8 cm

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1.

A Walk on the Sabbath in Stamford Hill oil on canvas, 1990, 61.5 x 45.6 cm

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125.

Rabbi watercolour, 24.5 x 25 cm

72.

Lovers in Pink pastel, 2003, 37.5 x 46.5 cm

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Exhibition Catalogue Oil 1.

A Walk on the Sabbath in Stamford Hill oil on canvas, 1990, 61.5 x 45.6 cm

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At the Hairdressers oil on canvas, 2005, 50.6 x 40.6 cm

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Bathers oil on canvas, 2005, 100 x 75 cm

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Friday Night Lovers oil on canvas, 2010, 75.8 x 61 cm

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Jewish Mother and Child oil on canvas, 2009, 51 x 40.8 cm

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Lady Arranging Chrysanthemums oil on canvas, 2000, 50.5 x 25 cm

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Lady Arranging Lilies oil on canvas, 2009, 51 x 40.8 cm

8.

Lady in Bath oil on canvas, 2008, 30.5 x 41 cm

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Little Girl in Snow oil on canvas, 2000, 40.5 x 30.5 cm

10. Lovers Asleep in Winter oil on canvas, 2009, 91 x 76 cm

20. Ode to Daodils by Wordsworth oil on canvas, 2006, 99 x 89.5 cm 21. Polish Couple oil on canvas, 1982, 71 x 51 cm 22. Portrait of Sister Wendy Beckett oil on canvas, 2000, 76.5 x 61.5 cm 23. Rabbi Studying Cabbalah oil on canvas, 2008, 39.4 x 29.6 cm 24. Rabbi Studying Spinoza oil on canvas, 2004, 45.6 x 35.6 cm 25. Sabbath Meal oil on canvas, 2007, 59.5 x 52 cm 26. Summerleaze Beach, Bude oil on canvas, 2009, 61 x 60.5 cm 27. The Clown oil on canvas, 1986, 71 x 56.3 cm 28. The Flower Stall in Portobello Road in

Spring oil on board, 56 x 45.7 cm 29. The Merry Go Round 'Au Bonheur des

Enfant' in Nice oil on canvas, 2010, 76.5 x 61.5 cm

11. Lovers in Bude

oil on canvas, 2010, 44.3 x 34.2 cm 13. Lovers in Snow oil on canvas, 2001, 40.7 x 30.7 cm 14. Lovers in Spring oil on canvas, 1989, 71.5 x 62.1 cm 15. Mother and Child with Checked Floor oil on canvas, 2007, 50.5 x 40.5 cm 16. Mother and Children in Holland Park oil on canvas, 2009, 75.5 x 61 cm 17. Mother and Children in St Ives oil on canvas, 2007, 126 x 75 cm 18. Mother Lighting Sabbath Candles oil on canvas, 2008, 65.7 x 40.5 cm 19. Mother with Baby Daughter oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm

Nortre Dame gouache, 2000, 29.9 x 23.7 cm 38. Lady in Autumn gouache, 1991, 45.5 x 32.7 cm 39. Lady in Autumn gouache, 1989, 43 x 32.4 cm 40. Lady Knitting gouache, 1997, 40 x 29.8 cm 41. Lady with Horse Chestnut Trees

in Spring gouache, 1992, 39 x 33 cm 42. Lovers by the Sea gouache, 2000, 26.6 x 21.2 cm 43. Lovers in Autumn gouache, 1998, 32.7 x 25.5 cm 44. Mother and Baby gouache, 1993, 25.5 x 20.4 cm 45. Mother and Children gouache, 2001, 30.5 x 25.5 cm 46. Mother Breast Feeding her Baby gouache, 1995, 43.5 x 25.3 cm 47. Mother with Baby in Snow

oil on canvas, 2007, 75 x 60.1 cm 12. Lovers in Paris

37. Lady Feeding Pigeons Near

gouache, 2003, 30.5 x 21.5 cm

Gouache 30. Cabaret Dancers gouache, 1991, 43.3 x 35.7 cm 31. Chinese New Year gouache, 1999, 28 x 32.6 cm 32. Dancing at the Wedding gouache, 1994, 33 x 22.2 cm 33. Dancing at the Wedding II gouache, 1994, 33.8 x 21.9 cm 34. Feeding Peacocks, Holland Park gouache, 33.5 x 29.2 cm 35. In the Shtetl (Village) gouache, 38 x 30.5 cm 36. Lady Arranging Chrysanthemums gouache, 1993, 33 x 29.5 cm

48. Rabbi with a Palm Tree gouache, 1990, 44 x 34.5 cm 49. Rabbi with Birds gouache, 2007, 29.5 x 25.5 cm 50. Rabbi with Flowers gouache, 2007, 32.5 x 30.5 cm 51. Souls Going to Heaven gouache, 1999, 37.5 x 31 cm 52. Spanish Dancers gouache, 1989, 55.7 x 39.7 cm 53. The Bus gouache, 1999, 22.5 x 30.5 cm 54. The Fallen Woman gouache, 1991, 31.5 x 23.5 cm 55. The Musicians gouache, 1989, 43.5 x 50.7 cm

29

71.

Lovers in Autumn pastel, 2000, 58.4 x 43.5 cm

30

56. The Orphan gouache, 31.2 x 23 cm 57. The Rag Picker gouache, 1989, 38 x 30 cm 58. The Teashop, Nice gouache, 1987, 28.6 x 28.6 cm 59. The Wedding Contract gouache, 1998, 41 x 34 cm 60. Two Rabbis gouache, 1993, 42.4 x 36.7 cm

74. Lovers with Pink Blossom pastel, 2000, 58.5 x 43.8 cm

pastel, 2000, 34.2 x 29.7 cm 76. Lovers with White Bird pastel, 2000, 58.5 x 44 cm 77. Mother and Baby pastel, 2002, 26.2 x 22.5 cm 78. Mother and Child Paddling pastel, 2002, 29.5 x 24.5 cm

pastel, 2000, 31 x 22.5 cm

61. A Pot of Flowers pastel, 2003, 45.5 x 43.8 cm 62. Family Meal pastel, 41 x 39.4 cm 63. Girl in the Sea pastel, 2002, 39.5 x 34.5 cm 64. Jewish Wedding pastel, 54.6 x 41.8 cm 65. Lady Arranging Flowers pastel, 2000, 29.5 x 20.7 cm 66. Lady with a Rose pastel, 1995, 59 x 41.9 cm 67. Lady with Bouquet on the Beach pastel, 2005, 42.5 x 38.4 cm 68. Lady with Flowers pastel, 2002, 25.5 x 20.1 cm 69. Lady with Seagulls pastel, 2002, 25.4 x 20 cm 70. Lovers Allonge with Red Carpet pastel, 2002, 42 x 55 cm 71. Lovers in Autumn pastel, 2000, 58.4 x 43.5 cm 72. Lovers in Pink pastel, 2003, 37.5 x 46.5 cm 73. Lovers with Blue Flowers pastel, 1998, 41.5 x 54.8 cm

pastel, 2002, 25.5 x 20.2 cm

75. Lovers with Pink Blossoms

79. Naked Bather

Pastel

94. Mother and Child in the Sea

80. Naked Lady pastel, 1997, 27.5 x 31.4 cm 81. Naked Lovers Kissing pastel, 1995, 59 x 41.9 cm 82. Rabbi Reading pastel, 2000, 25.8 x 21.7 cm 83. Rabbi with Red Hair pastel, 1999, 33 x 24.2 cm 84. Rabbi with Red Hair Reading pastel, 1999, 33 x 24.3 cm 85. Roses and Dahlias pastel, 1998, 21 x 18 cm 86. Russian Lady with Flower pastel, 1995, 51.2 x 42 cm 87. Teashop in the Park pastel, 50.5 x 35.5 cm 88. The Kiss pastel, 1998, 29.6 x 21 cm 89. The Kiss II pastel, 1998, 35.5 x 26.2 cm 90. The Kiss III pastel, 1996, 42 x 44.5 cm 91. The Kiss IV pastel, 1996, 41.9 x 41.6 cm 92. The Sea, Stormy Day pastel, 2003, 39 x 36.2 cm 93. Street Scene with Boulangerie pastel, 2000, 31.5 x 27.1 cm

Watercolour 95. A Couple with a Bird watercolour, 1998, 24 x 17.9 cm 96. A Kiss watercolour, 2000, 32.8 x 30.2 cm 97. A Kiss by the Sea watercolour, 28.9 x 22.7 cm 98. Breakfast watercolour, 1986, 23 x 19.5 cm 99. Bride and Groom watercolour, 1984, 34 x 26.8 cm 100. Buddhist Monk watercolour, 1977, 31.6 x 25.4 cm 101. Couple Walking by the Sea watercolour, 1985, 31 x 29.4 cm 102. Girl by the Sea watercolour, 1984, 28.3 x 26.5 cm 103. Girl with Flowers by the Sea watercolour, 32.5 x 26.8 cm 104. Girl with Parrot in a Cage watercolour, 1985, 28.2 x 24.5 cm 105. Girl with Rose Bush watercolour, 1983, 35.4 x 31.8 cm 106. Girl with Roses and Lilacs watercolour, 1983, 25.5 x 22.7 cm 107. Jewish Boy watercolour, 1999, 18.1 x 13.5 cm 108. Lady at a Dressing Table watercolour, 1990, 26.5 x 23 cm 109. Lady in a Rose Garden watercolour, 1972, 29 x 21 cm 110. Lady in the Rain watercolour, 1995, 28.4 x 23.2 cm 111. Lady Washing Herself watercolour, 1987, 32.5 x 25 cm

31

92.

The Sea, Stormy Day pastel, 2003, 39 x 36.2 cm

112. Lady with Blue Hat watercolour, 1992, 17.2 x 14.6 cm 113. Lady with Cat watercolour, 1999, 25.5 x 20.4 cm 114. Lady with Mirror watercolour, 1999, 26 x 25.5 cm 115. Little Girl Paddling watercolour, 25 x 22.7 cm 116. Lovers in Moscow watercolour, 43 x 28.4 cm 117. Lovers with Flowers watercolour, 41.1 x 33.7 cm

32

118. Mother and Baby watercolour, 37.6 x 33.7 cm 119. Mother and Baby watercolour, 28 x 19 cm 120. Mother and Baby with Lilac watercolour, 1993, 24.5 x 21 cm 121. Mother and Baby with Winter Sun watercolour, 35 x 27.7 cm 122. Naked Lovers watercolour, 32.6 x 22.5 cm 123. Nude by the Sea watercolour, 1983, 26.3 x 16.2 cm

63.

Girl in the Sea pastel, 2002, 39.5 x 34.5 cm

124. Nue Allonge watercolour, 1986, 25.8 x 35.2 cm 125. Rabbi watercolour, 24.5 x 25 cm 126. Rabbi Reading watercolour, 19.1 x 15 cm 127. The Three Graces by the Sea watercolour, 1984, 37 x 29.6 cm 128. With my Daughter Hermione on her Birthday watercolour, 38.5 x 34.2 cm 129. Woman with Mirror watercolour, 1995, 28.5 x 26.8 cm

33

40.

Lady Knitting gouache, 1997 , 40 x 29.8 cm

34

33.

Dancing at the Wedding II gouache, 1994, 33.8 x 21.9 cm

37.

Lady Feeding Pigeons near Notre Dame gouache, 2000, 29.9 x 23.7 cm

35

18.

Mother Lighting Sabbath Candles oil on canvas, 2008, 65.7 x 40.5 cm

36

9.

Little Girl in Snow oil on canvas, 2000, 40.5 x 30.5 cm

6.

Lady Arranging Chrysanthemums oil on canvas, 2000, 50.5 x 25 cm

37

128.

With my Daughter Hermione on her Birthday watercolour, 38.5 x 34.2 cm

38

116.

Lovers in Moscow watercolour, 43 x 28.4 cm

127.

The Three Graces by the Sea watercolour, 1984, 37 x 29.6 cm

39

80.

Naked Lady pastel, 1997, 27.5 x 31.4 cm

89.

The Kiss II pastel, 1998, 35.5 x 26.2 cm

40

111.

Lady Washing Herself watercolour, 1987, 32.5 x 25 cm

15.

Mother and Child with Checked Floor oil on canvas, 2007, 50.5 x 40.5 cm

41

Biography 1928

Dora Holzhandler born in Paris on 22nd of March to Polish Jewish refugee parents, Sehia and Ruchla. Dora was fostered at a few months old and spent time in Normandy.

1933

Dora is reunited with her mother in Paris.

1934

The Holzhandler family move to Dalston, London.

1939

Evacuated to Norfolk.

1940

Returned to London and attended North East London Emergency Secondary School.

1941

Moved to Suffolk with mother where she attended the West Suffolk County School, Bury St Edmunds.

1946/48 Lived in Paris where she studied French literature at the Sorbonne and art at La Grande Chaumière.

1948/50 Dora returned to London where she attended the Anglo‑French Art Centre.

1950

Dora married George Swinford on the 11th of September. They have three daughters: Amalie (1951), Hepzibah (1956), Hermione (1966).

1971/75 Lived at Allanton, a country house in Dumfries, Scotland.

1995

Death of Athene, Hermione's daughter at age six.

1996

Dora visits the Opening of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, then to the Tibetan Buddhist Holy Island of the Scottish coast to plant a rose tree in memory of Athene.

1997

Dora Holzhandler by Philip Vann is published by Lund Humphries, London and The Overlook Press, New York.

2002

Dora, with husband George and granddaughters Eve and Tara, travel to Dharamsala, India for an audience with His Holiness The Dalai Lama of Tibet.

2004

Visit to Paris.

2005

Visits to St. Ives and Spain.

2006

Major Retrospective exhibition at Ben Uri Gallery, London.

Previous Exhibitions 1949

Young Contemporaries, RBA Galleries, London

1954

Beaux Arts Gallery, London

1958

John Moores exhibition, Liverpool

1960

1975/76 Wintered in St. Ives, Cornwall then moved back to London where she and George still live today.

Chenil Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1962

Portal Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1980 ‑2000

1964‑68 Crane Arts, London, mixed exhibitions.

Extensive travelling abroad brought Dora to places like Thailand, India, New York, Israel, and Finland.

1967

Grosvenor Gallery, London

43

30.

Cabaret Dancers gouache, 1991, 43.3 x 35.7 cm

44

1971

Langton Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1972

Naïve Art from the Collection of Dr and Mrs Arthur H Sams, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles

1973

Langton Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1976

Galerie de Beerenburght, Holland Langton Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1977

London University Langton Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1978‑87 Rona Gallery, London, mixed exhibitions 1979

Spirit of London, Royal Festival Hall, London

1980

Crane Arts, London, one‑woman exhibition

1984

New Frontiers of Naïve Art in Europe, Royal Festival Hall, London

1985

Crane Kalman Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition Beaux Arts, Bath, one‑woman exhibition Ben Uri Art Society, London First American Exhibition: Dora Holzhandler ‑ Paintings and Watercolours, Graham Modern Gallery, New York, one‑woman exhibition

1986

Peintres Naïfs Britanniques, Musée Municipal, Carcassonne; Galerie Paul Valéy, Sète; Galerie de Salles, Nîmes; Musée Fabre, Montpellier

74.

Lovers with Pink Blossoms pastel, 2000, 34.2 x 29.7 cm

1987

Galerie Antoinette, Paris Dora Holzhandler: Paintings of Jewish Life, Rona Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1989

Dora Holzhandler: Paintings of a Jewish Childhood and a Visit to Israel, Rona Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1990

Beaux Arts, Bath, one‑woman exhibition Rona Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition Festival of Jewish Culture, part of ʻGlasgow ʻ90ʼ, one‑woman exhibition

45

78.

Mother and Child Paddling pastel, 2002, 29.5 x 24.5 cm

34.

Feeding Peacocks, Holland Park gouache, 33.5 x 29.2 cm

46

1991

Works on Paper, Holland Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1992

Dora Holzhandler: Glimpses from a Jewish Life, The Sternberg Centre, London, one‑woman exhibition Dora Holzhandler: Spring in Paris, Rona Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition Works on Paper, Bowmoore Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition

1993

Naivistit Iittalassa '93, Finland, Guest Artist Works on Paper, Holland Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition Watercolours and Ceramics, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, one‑woman exhibition

1994

1995

1996

1997

Paintings in Gouache, Rona Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition L'Chaim! to Life!: The Jewish Year in the Art of Dora Holzhandler, St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow, one‑woman exhibition L'Chaim! to Life!: The Jewish Year in the Art of Dora Holzhandler, Jewish Museum, Manchester Boundary Gallery, London Beaux Arts, Bath, one‑woman exhibition Piano Nobile, London, Christmas exhibition Jewish Museum, London,one‑woman exhibition Rona Gallery, London, one‑woman exhibition Piano Nobile, London, one‑woman exhibition

Beyond Life and Death, Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh 1998

Judy Saslow Gallery, Chicago, one‑woman exhibition Outsider Art exhibition, Orleans House, Richmond Works on Paper, Zebra Gallery, london, one‑woman exhibition

1999

Angels and Demons, Jewish Museum, London, one‑woman exhibition Goddesses, Lovers, and Rabbis, Piano Nobile, London, one‑woman exhibition

2000

Wren Gallery, Burford, Oxfordshire, one‑woman exhibition

2001

Dora Holzhandler, New Paintings and Works on Paper, Piano Nobile, London, one‑woman exhibition

2004

The Dance of Life and Love, Piano Nobile, London, one‑woman exhibition

2005

The Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, one‑woman exhibition

2006

Paintings from St Ives to Jerusalem, Piano Nobile, London Retrospective Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery, London Jewish Museum of Art

2007

Clark Art, Hale, Cheshire, one‑woman exhibition

2008

Lovers in Cornwall and Other Paintings, Piano Nobile, London, one‑woman exhibition

2010

The St John's Wood Art School & The Anglo‑French Art Centre, Boundary Gallery, London

47

60.

Two Rabbis gouache, 1993, 42.4 x 36.7 cm

48

48.

Rabbi with a Palm Tree gouache, 1990, 44 x 34.5 cm

Work in Public Collections Brighton Art Gallery and Museum Musée d'Art Naïf Anatole Jacovsky, Nice Ben Uri Gallery ‑ The London Jewish Museum of Art The Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow The Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel The Museum of London The Nuffield Foundation The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, Glasgow The Sternberg Centre, London

Work in Private Collections The late Sir Charles Chaplin The Duke and Duchess of Bedford The Earl and Countess of Denbigh Lady Humloke Professor John Cassels Sam Wanamaker The late Josef Herman Edna OʼBrien Alan Ayckbourn Vincent Price Rod Steiger Anthony Petullo Jenny Page Sue Perkins Vanessa Feltz Maureen Lipman Jack Dee 53.

The Bus gouache, 1999, 22.5 x 30.5 cm

49

21.

Polish Couple oil on canvas, 1982, 71 x 51 cm

ISBN 978‑1‑870507‑78‑3 Text © Philip Vann 2011 Photography Christian Soro/ Jay Goldmark/George Swinford Design Porter/Goldmark

Goldmark Gallery 14 Orange Street Uppingham Rutland, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424

This edition first published in the United Kingdom in March 2011

by Goldmark. All rights reserved. www.doraholzhandler.co.uk www.goldmarkart.com

Dora Holzhandler SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THE ARTIST ʻDoraʼs paintings are alive and will last; they are an expression of an inner experience, not a display of outward show. And what a luminous experience they represent . . . the core of each of her pictures is the feeling within it – the note her work strikes, which rings out a telling life of our times.ʼ Julian Spalding, formerly Director of Glasgow Museums

ʻThough child‑like in execution, her pictures are stunningly direct visual statements . . . portrayed with endearing ingeniousness, patent sincerity and generous leavening of humour. . . . And her frail, diaphanous watercolours seem to express her innermost emotions.ʼ Barry Fealdman, Jewish Chronicle

ʻAll of Dora Holzhandlerʼs paintings possess an ineffable tenderness, they make us recall our childhoods, our myths, our roots, and if we have severed from these things, they make us long for them in a palpable way. They are little expanses of sweetness and peace. Dora is that rare thing – a mother and child in one, as an artist she captures the apparent simplicity of life and infuses it with a depth I find eerie.ʼ Edna OʼBrien

ʻDora Holzhandler grasps life and celebrates it. She sees us clearly, for her all is sacred, all is aflame with divine power, even sorrow, even death. She offers to life here a total yes.ʼ Sister Wendy Beckett

ʻHolzhandlerʼs images of childhood bliss have made her one of the countryʼs most popular artists.ʼ The Guardian

ʻShe says, “All my paintings have esoteric secrets in them”. The influences of lifestyle, Jewish and Buddhist religious folklore and imagery, mysticism and almost childlike innocence are all integral parts of what makes Dora Holzhandler the artist and the art she has consistently produced for over 50 years so unique.ʼ David J. Glasser, Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art

ʻFor Dora Holzhandler life often seems to be a dance.

Or a feast. Or the two together. Certainly a happy place, full of colour and movement. And yet, in a way, repose is the keynote of her art. . . .

[She is] sophisticated, yes. But working with a curious directness which can only come from some sort of divine innocence.ʼ John Russell Taylor, The Times art critic

ʻNon‑academic (some would say ʻnaïveʼ) in perspective, Doraʼs paintings sparkle with vibrant decorative effects and innocent touches of humour.

No matter what her subject matter (picnicking in a park, a rabbi at prayer, naked lovers embracing) her paintings are clearly rooted in a mystical perception of reality.ʼ Philip Vann, Jewish Chronicle

ʻ. . . her method of painting is that of the pattern‑ maker, oriental in origin, colourful as a Persian illumination, always brilliant but never harsh. These are pictures invented by a mother but painted by a child – a sophisticated but immensely amiable child.ʼ Eric Newton, leading British art historian, The Guardian

ʻDoraʼs paintings are a lovely evocation of my childhood.ʼ Rabbi Lionel Blue

www.doraholzhandler.co.uk

Photo Jay Goldmark

GOLDMARK GALLERY, 14 ORANGE STREET, UPPINGHAM, RUTLAND, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424 www.goldmarkart.com www.doraholzhandler.co.uk