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**John Williamson** @wmson2000_art@pixelfed.social · 1d

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"Empty, Burnt Warsaw by Night," Henryk Beck, 1944.

Beck (1896-1946) was an esteemed gynecologist and obstetrician who was never a professional artist, but who took to art as a sort of visual diary.

Born in Ukraine to Polish-Jewish parents, he got his medical degree and moved to Warsaw, where he had a successful practice and taught at medical schools. He also performed Poland's first gender-reassignment surgery in 1937, to athlete Witold Smętek.

Beck fought the Nazis in WWII, but then fled to France, then back to Ukraine, where he was almost exiled to Siberia by the Soviets. He resumed medicine and teaching after the war, but died of a heart attack in 1946.

He painted in watercolors all his life, and his pictures of war-torn Warsaw, and his caricatures of the occupiers, are noted today as historical documents. Here we see the damage done by the war...but with a star giving a beam of hope. His works have been collected in a book and he's now the subject of a number of exhibits.

From the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.

A Symbolist painting. In tones of blue, we see ruins of a burnt city, with some rubble in the foreground and a tall, burnt-out shell in the rear, with a damaged building that might be a factory in the mid-distance. In the upper right, a star shines, with a single beam bisecting the image diagonally.

#Art #Symbolism #Watercolor

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