IIn 1938, Nazi troops invaded Austria and subjugated the country in the Third Reich in an event known as the “Anschluss”, which brought official anti-Semitism, along with political violence, to the small German-speaking people.
A new exhibition in New York features works of art by three Jewish artists who fled Vienna during the Anschluss as commercial artists and thrived. Armed with their pens, they use their wit, talent and resilience. Their best works can be seen in a group exhibition, Three With a Pen, at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, proving that art can be used as a weapon against fascism.
Artists fought fascism with political satire almost 100 years ago, and yet their work still resonates. “History does not repeat itself, but there are certain phenomena that are at least a reminder,” said Michael Haider, director of the forum.
“Once you have a certain amount of racism or organized hatred in society, where people are systematically intimidated, it should be a warning sign,” he said. “From what these artists have experienced, we know the outcome.”
The artists are Lily Renée, Bil Spira and Paul Peter Porges, whose comic books, drawings, editorial cartoons and caricatures can be seen. They are shown along with photos and ephemera illustrating their biographies.
“All three artists have the history of the escape of Nazi-occupied Vienna, and then made their careers and fame – two in New York and one in Paris – elsewhere,” Haider said. ‘When I saw this exhibition in 2019 at the Jewish Museum Vienna, I thought,’ Let’s bring it to New York now. ”
Lily Renée, an artist born in 1921 who is celebrating her 100th birthday this year, came out through the ‘Child Transport’, a humanitarian effort that enabled Jewish refugee children to escape to England. Fortunately, in 1940 she reunited with her parents in New York.
There she works as a graphic artist and illustrator, and becomes known for her heroine Señorita Rio, the protagonist of a cartoon from the 1940s who followed a Hollywood star who fought against Nazis at night as a secret agent. She draws her comics as’ L. Renee ”, so many readers thought she was a man.
Some of the works seen by Renée include drawings from her comic book Señorita Rio, created in bright colors, along with illustrations from her children’s book Red Is the Heart.
‘Lily lives in a upper-middle-class family in Vienna. She will not end up in comics under normal circumstances. “She wanted to be a serious artist working in fashion design,” Haider said. “If there was no Anschluss, she would study art and become a designer.”
As a Jewish refugee in New York, she had to earn money to help her family. She started with comics after her mother found an ad that wanted to look for comics.
“She was so good that she could make her own characters,” Haider said. ‘But she only did comics to make money. At the time, comics were being watched. ”
She was also one of the few women who entered the field at the time. “My mother never used the word ‘feminism’ to describe herself or her work,” said Renée’s daughter, Nina Phillips.
“In fact, she objected to being called a feminist because she thought modern feminism was too ideological and went too far,” Phillips said. “Whether consciously or not, much of her production has featured female characters in traditional male roles.”
Paul Peter Porges was an artist who lived from 1927 to 2016, creating political cartoons for Mad Magazine and the New Yorker, which focused on Western society. Like Renée, he also escapes from Vienna by child transport to England, but is later detained as a teenager in an internment camp in France.
In the exhibition, there is a photograph of the artist holding up a self-portrait he drew during his time in the U.S. Army in the early 1950s, showing his approach to exaggerating physical features. There’s also a drawing by Sigmund Freud and some traffic in downtown Manhattan.
The exhibition also contains shocking drawings made in a concentration camp by Wilhelm “Bil” Spira, an artist who lived from 1913 to 1999. Spira signed in Auschwitz in 1944. It contains disturbing images of angry guards and forced laborers.
“He moved into the concentration camps, but if the guards saw it, he would be executed,” Haider said. “He documented what he saw in the camp. He hid it.
“When the Russians who liberated the camp burned all the possessions of the prisoners, everything he owned was gone,” he said. ‘The only original drawings were those smuggled out by other prisoners. Spira also made copies of other drawings he later drew from memory. ”
His editorial cartoons from the 1930s can also be seen, including a satire by Hitler and drawings by the Austrian actor Hans Moser, as well as the American playwright Sinclair Lewis.
“Bil Spira is an incredible story,” Haider said. “He has already been published in social democratic newspapers and has been actively fighting the Nazis. He left Vienna in 1938. ”
Spira did not get a visa to enter the US, was taken by the Gestapo, survived concentration camps and later lived in Paris, where he became a well-known cartoonist working for French and Swiss newspapers.
“All of these artists are different,” Haider said. “They all have unique biographies. They all had promising lives until 1938. ”
The Anschluss produced a tragic disruption, but each miraculously survived and continued to make works of art. These drawings on paper are proof of their existence, only with their pens.
“We wanted to honor the artworks of all three artists, to show that they are great artists, despite the fact that they were survivors,” said Sabine Bergler, who co-authored the exhibition with Michael Freund at the Jewish Museum Vienna. has, compiled. 2019.
“On the other hand, we wanted to show that they were survivors as well,” Bergler said. “We tried to show the people behind the artworks, to see each one as independent artists, and how the Holocaust was the fate of their work.”