The Art of Jacob Barosin

Collection ID

ART.001291

Type

Art

Date

1955

Geography

New York United States

Language

N/A

Medium

Paint on Paper

Dimensions

21 3/4” × 30” 24.75 × 30 in. (62.87 × 76.2 cm)

Exhibit Location

Not on View

This painting of Jesus and the children was created as an initial sketch for a mural commissioned by the Central Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The composition was changed before the mural was completed.

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 his wife, 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 1955 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] Correspondence with the church is in the collections of the Leo Baeck Institute and confirms the purpose of this study through descriptions in the letters. The church asked for changes to the composition, specifically, to remove the central figure in red/orange, to make Jesus the central character, and to change a few of the children’s faces and positions.

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