Jul 19, 20234 min read

Esther Carp: Radiance Rediscovered, by Jennifer Stern

Esther Carp exhibition at mahJ (copyright mahJ/Thibaut Chapotot)

Esther Carp (b. 1897, Skierniewice, Poland; d. 1970, Créteil, France) was a truly original Jewish artist: but she’s practically unknown today, especially among English-speakers.

She was associated with two important movements: Yung Yidish and the École de Paris. For a time she was notably successful, both in her native Poland and in Paris, her adopted city. As a young woman, she produced one of the most remarkable illustrated Yiddish books of the 20th century. She was one of a tiny number of Jewish women who exhibited regularly alongside Paris’s most daring artistic innovators. Though she worked in various styles, many of her paintings are strikingly distinctive. She was a boldly masterful colorist.

Of course the Second World War brutally disrupted her career. But she also suffered from serious health issues: she was hospitalized in 1941 for delusional paranoia. This initial hospitalization lasted until 1944, and likely saved her from deportation to a concentration camp. Her health broke down further after 1954. Between 1964 and her death in 1970, she lived permanently in psychiatric institutions.

Scholars are now rediscovering Carp’s art and life story. Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in Paris (mahJ) is currently hosting the first-ever museum exhibition of her work, curated by head of Modern and Contemporary art, Pascale Samuel. The show opened in 2022, but has been extended to December 2023. The mahJ website offers useful materials about Carp, including interesting videos – but naturally everything is in French.

The main source of information from Carp’s lifetime was written in Yiddish: Chil Aronson’s Bilder un Geshtaltn fun Montparnasse/Scenes and Figures of Montparnasse (1963), a unique resource about the Jewish École de Paris artists. It includes a chapter on Carp, where he calls her “one of the [École’s] most gifted women artists.”

A handful of online resources about Carp exist in English (none in print that I know of), and I decided to supplement them with an introductory post here: more will come later. I also translated mahJ’s chronology of her life and Aronson’s chapter about her into English.

A few key points about Carp’s artistic development:

– Between 1919 and 1921, she was affiliated with Yung Yidish in Lodz, Poland: a literary and artistic collective dedicated to creating new forms of modern Jewish art. They championed Yiddish language and the equal importance of words and images. In 1921, Carp produced an illustrated book of poems by Yung Yidish author, Chaïm Krol: Himlen in Opgrunt/Heavens in the Abyss. She created both text and images with linoleum prints. Each known version is colored differently (see one at mahJ). This book is a masterpiece of modern Jewish book illustration.

– She moved to Paris in 1925 and settled in Montparnasse, center of the École de Paris. She later told Aronson how moved she was by discovering French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting: especially works by Manet, Degas, Sisley and Cézanne in the Louvre’s Camondo collection.

– Her only solo show was in 1931 at Léopold Zborowski’s rue de Seine art gallery.

– She returned to Poland 1931-35 and participated in group shows in Warsaw.

– She settled permanently in Paris in 1935 and exhibited at the Salon des Indépendents, the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Tuileries into the 1950s. She showed with the Union des Femmes Françaises and the Salon de Mai in 1949.

Stylistically, Carp was very much herself. Neo-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Orphism were influences, but she wasn’t affiliated with any of them. Many of her works use what Aronson called a “mosaic concept,” with forms conveyed through short tesserae-like strokes of brilliantly paired or contrasted colors (Aronson rightly emphasized her coloristic genius). The short strokes create swirling dynamic movement even when the subject is quiet: she favored domestic interiors with women and children, musical scenes, still lifes etc.

Why has such a striking artist been forgotten until so recently? Of course the war was a factor. Carp’s mental health also impacted her productivity and ability to sustain her pre-war successes: she became secretive and fearful of people copying her work (she wrote “not to be copied” on the back of many canvases). Painting in oils was difficult while she was hospitalized; though she continued drawing, she didn’t like others seeing her work. The stigma surrounding mental illness didn’t help: Chil Aronson notably skirted the issue in his chapter.

It’s also easier for history to forget women artists. And a Jewish woman artist in particular, given the difficulty of fitting Jews into national artistic canons. Many male Jewish École de Paris painters are no longer known the way they should be – and it’s that much easier for a woman to drop out of view.

Finally, the perennial question: did Esther Carp make “Jewish art?” Perhaps her greatest work was a Yiddish book. Chil Aronson says she still spoke Yiddish while living in Paris. Some of her works show traditional Jewish life. If not for her hospitalization during the war, she likely would have been murdered as a Jew. But should her art be called “Jewish?” Or Polish? Or French? All of these? None of these? Is there a better way to classify artists that doesn’t leave Jews and other minorities in limbo? I have only questions, not answers.

Resources:

- mahJ's biographical outline in English (my translation)

- Chil Aronson in English (my translation)

- Chil Aronson in Yiddish

- Carp online resources in English

- links to selected Carp works