Background

Goldberg was born in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland, on March 20, 1917. He was the son of Summer, a village cobbler, and Yenta Goldberg. He was the ninth child to his parents and the first boy after eight girls. The Goldberg's home was frequently visited by beggars and klezmers.

Education

Chaim Goldberg's drawings were noticed on the walls of his father's shoemaker workshop by Saul Silberstein in 1931. He was a student of Sigmund Freud and did a post-doctorate work on his book, Jewish Village Mannerisms. The next morning they went on foot to Lublin, a distance of 26 miles and Dr. Silberstein heard the opinions of several respected individuals of the artworks by Chaim Goldberg to provide support to the fourteen-year-old artist. Silberstein then got him a number of small scholarships based on the letters of recommendation.

Goldberg and Silberstein left for Kraków with a large collection of the art in portfolios. Wealthy patrons, such as a judge and a newspaper publisher, sponsored his education at the Józef Mehoffer School for Fine Arts (now Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts), Kraków, from which he graduated in 1934. At 17 he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he was the youngest student to enter the school. He graduated from it in 1938.

The Second World War, interrupted his artistic growth, and he fled to Siberia. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, after receiving a fellowship from the Polish Government from 1947-1949.

Career

Goldberg was called to the the Polish army in the autumn of 1938. When the Polish army surrendered to Germany he was incarcerated as a Prisoner of War and held in a labor camp, from which he was able to escape. In order to rescue his family, Chaim, his future wife, her sister and their parents became exiles escaping to Russia on foot, ending up in Novosibirsk. They managed to return to Poland in 1946. There he worked on various commissions for the Polish Government.

In 1955 Chaim Goldberg was allowed to leave Communist Poland with his family, in spite of the protest from the Ministry of Culture, and he emigrated to Israel. There the artist exhibited and sold his work to American, Canadian tourists and Israeli collectors. While in Israel he managed to open his own studio, where he started to create large paintings that depicted Jewish life he remembered in his Shtetl of Kazimierz Dolny, including The Wedding, The Shtetl, Simchat Torah and Don't Forget.

In 1967, Goldberg arrived in the United States, having a two-year business visa on an exhibition-tour and continued to create his paintings. He produced line engravings of his village characters, as well as sculptures. He and his family became citizens of the United States in 1973.

Chaim Goldberg's "Culture Shock" series and as well as some other series based on real life and politics of the period as were the works of the series the "Mad Drivers". Some of his artworks dealt with his own dream sequences, including the "Violin Thief Sequence" and the "Bird Dream Sequence".

Goldberg attended a performance of the "Emmett Kelly, Jr. Circus" in 1974. He was so inspired that began a series of drawings and other works on paper dedicated to the "Circus theme." Then changed his interests and started to depict dance, which was the main subject of this period. He also carved in wood. His works on the dance theme consisted of paintings, watercolours, and sculpture carved in wood or made of aggregate concrete.

While being in exile in Russia, in 1944 Goldberg made an effort to document what he heard. He then returned to Poland with his wife and son, Victor, and started to create over 150 works of art dealing with the Holocaust. Many of them are in the permanent collection of several museums, including the Spertus Museum in Chicago.

In 1987, while working on the Holocaust theme, Goldberg returned to painting Kazimierz Dolny and the Jewish life in the village. These artworks were more 'story-telling' and documentary, than his early paintings.

At an age when most men are thinking of retiring or at least resting on their laurels, Chaim Goldberg continued to explore new forms of expression to light up the human experience. In 1997, at the age of 80, he was diagnosed with a disabling illness.

Achievements

• 

  Chaim Goldberg was a gifted artist, who worked in nearly every medium available to the visual artist from watercolours to sculpture.
  
  In 1947 he received Fellowship from the Polish Ministry of Culture for a 2-year study program in Paris at the prestigious art academy Ecole Nacional des beaux-arts.
  
  Today his works are displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City, New York; the Beit HaNassi, Jerusalem, Israel; the Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva, Switzerland; the Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Germany; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; the Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, California, etc.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • The Wedding

    (Initial sketch Catalog #G-46.002.)

  • The Lovers

    (Catalog #76.148.)

  • Soul Convergence

  • Hot Wheels

  • Heart Dance

  • The Wedding (G-62.014)

  • Les Petit Maisons (drypoint)

  • DANCING TOGETHER

  • Eilat Observation Boat

  • Tsfat Alley

  • Loading The Donkey

  • Rabbi in Prayer

  • Carrying the Torahs

  • Fishmonger

  • At the market

  • Kleizmers

  • A Day in a Winter

  • Hello, Professor Pruszkowski

  • Swing

  • Baker at work

  • Circus Day in Kazimierz

  • Figure in Town

  • Towards Light Land

  • Jewish Wedding

  • Kazimierz Dolny

  • Concert

  • Market Square in Kazimierz Dolny

  • View of m Kazimierz Dolny

  • Untitled Village Scene

  • Untitled

  • Sound of happiness

  • Untitled

Religion

Chaim Goldberg grew up in a religious family.

Personality

Chaim Goldberg had a deep understanding of human values, since he spent much of his life searching for them.

Quotes from others about the person

• Isaac Bashevis Singer: "Chaim Goldberg came from the shtetl and remembers its every detail. He is never abstract but is true to the objects and their divine order. His work is enriching Jewish art and the image of our tradition."

Interests

• Artists

  Marc Chagall

Connections

Chaim Goldberg married Rachel on April 15, 1944. The couple produced two sons, Victor and Shalom.

Father:

Summer Goldberg

Mother:

Yenta Goldberg

Spouse:

Rachel Goldberg

Son:

Shalom Goldberg

Shalom Goldberg is a curator of the Chaim Goldberg Collection, photographer as well as historian-biographer and promoter of the artist.

Son:

Victor

References

• Complete, Illustrated Inventory of Available Graphics This is an inventory of currently available graphics by Chaim Goldberg, master engraver.
  2018
• Chaim Goldberg: A Modernist Artist with a Mission (Part 1) This publication provides an introduction to the entire artist, with a special emphasis on his modernist work. His work of the shtetl life, only about a third of his total output is also included in this publication. We invite the reader to observe and make up their own mind.
  2015
• Chaim Goldberg: A Modernist Artist with a Mission (Part 2) Part 2 - of An Introduction to a Life's Work. Over 650 work of art are reproduced in color, plus two essays and an introduction by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
  2015
• Chaim Goldberg: Selected Work 1954-1996 This publication presents 100 of his best paintings, sculptures, drawings and line engravings and it clearly demonstrates that despite Chaim Goldberg's very Jewish sounding name, that he was a major all around artist, and a major, unrecognized force in the art of the 20th Century.
  2015
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