Portrait of Sonia Barosin
ART.001281
Art
1950s
New York United States
N/A
Watercolor on Paper
21.38 × 23.69 in. (54.31 × 60.17 cm)
Not on View
This delicate watercolor painting depicts Jacob’s wife, Sonia Barosin (née Finkel). She and Jacob met at the University of Berlin, when he accompanied her violin music on the piano. She survived the Holocaust with Jacob and immigrated to the United States in 1947. Sonia Barosin died in 1973.
Jacob (Judey) Barosin (1906–2001) was a Jewish artist born in Riga, Russia (now Latvia), who fled to Berlin, Germany, shortly before World War I. He was forced to flee again to Paris, France, in 1933, after Hitler rose to power. Due to anti-Jewish laws established by the Nazis, Jacob and Sonia spent the next four years running from the Gestapo. After the war, Jacob and Sonia immigrated to the United States, where Jacob made a living as a sketch artist for NBC-TV. He also illustrated the Jewish Family Bible, created a series on Jesus called the Life of Christ for the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and held numerous exhibitions in the United States and Israel. Collections of material related to Jacob Barosin’s life and work can be found at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, the Leo Baeck Institute, the Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society, and Museum of the Bible.
Originally created in the 1950s by Jacob Barosin, New York, New York; [1] Inherited in 2001 by Peter Garik and Katherine Greenblatt, Boston, Massachusetts; Donated in 2023 to Museum of the Bible, Washington, DC.
Notes: [1] Exact date is unknown, but the style is like other works by him in the 1950s, after he and his wife moved to the United States.
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