Abraham Ostrzega

The neon Abraham Ostrzega was created for the exhibition under the same title at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art (2017). The exhibition, whose point of reference was the Jewish sculptor Abraham Ostrzega (1889–1942), was organised in cooperation with the Cultural Heritage Foundation, which in 2016 carried out the renovation of 24 tombstones by Ostrzega at the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw. This project was linked to the commemoration of the 75^th anniversary of the commencement of Aktion Reinhardt, the extermination of Jews in the General Governorate. One of its victims was Ostrzega, who was killed in Treblinka in 1942. The Zachęta Gallery showed the works of four invited artists who confronted the sculptor’s oeuvre and the historical and social context of his artistic activities. A tour of the tombstones restored by the Foundation was offered as a part of the exhibition.

In pre-war Warsaw, Ostrzega ran the Atelier of Decorative Art. He expressed himself mainly in funereal sculpture, producing tombstones commissioned by the Jewish community. He had received a traditional education, but did not shy away from modernist elements. Contrary to the principles of Hebrew orthodoxy, he introduced figural motifs, such as angels of death or women mourners, into his tombstones. He concealed faces at the back of matzevah tombstones and explored the issue of figural expression. The Jews’ reaction to his tombstones was iconoclastic: they were destroyed or it was demanded that he re-sculpt their parts. Ostrzega, who belonged to the Jewish Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts, was in dispute with the qahal.

Hubert Czerepok’s work is characterised by a simple composition: it is the sculptor’s name and surname in capital letters inscribed into a spindle-like shape of the eye, which has been fitted into the tympanum crowning the façade of the Zachęta building. In this manner, Czerepok refers to Abraham Ostrzega personally, since the Jewish sculptor had been a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (i.e. Zachęta) from 1925 and had exhibited his works in its salons from as early as 1910. Yet at the same time Czerepok plays on the ambiguity of the sculptor’s name. In Polish, the word ostrzega is the third person singular form of the infinitive ostrzegać, meaning “to warn”; thus, ABRAHAM OSTRZEGA means, literally, “Abraham issues a warning”. Also, it is impossible not to associate the artist’s first name with the biblical patriarch Abraham, who is considered a prophet in Islam; and the shape of Czerepok’s neon evokes the “eye of the Prophet”, a popular apotropaic amulet. The Jewish sculptor’s biography indicates what exactly “Abraham issues a warning” against: the resultant associations inevitably lead us towards racial, national and religious hatred.