"Overcoming the Powers of Darkness:" The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art

Fritz Ascher was born on Oct. 17, 1893 in Berlin and died on Mar. 26,1970 in Berlin
A Holocaust survivor, his work was discovered by Rachel Cohen in the mid-80s and inspired her founding of The Fritz Asher Society in 2014. Ascher, an Expressionist and symbolism artist, is just now being rediscovered, so we are in on the ground floor..

Alice Cahana

  I discovered the Fritz Ascher Society by accident, when I was researching a blog on the artist Alice Cahana. Cahana (1929-2017) was a Hungarian Jew from Sarvar who survived four different concentration camps in the last year of WWII, losing every member of her extended family except her father and her beloved older sister Edith. Edith survived only to perish from illness immediately after liberation. She entered a hospital and Alice never saw her again. Cahana married and came to the US, where she became known for her art of the Holocaust and left a remarkable legacy. Loss is an enduring pain, Nazi terror knew no bounds, and it informed Alice's life and her art. How could it not?

In learning about Alice Cahana, I became interested in the art and the artists who survived the inhuman violence of  Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.  

So did Rachel Cohen, who some years ago discovered the art of Fritz Ascher, whose career, like Cahana's and so many other artists, was motivated, interrupted or destroyed by the Nazi regime. Cohen felt, rightly, that these artists had not received the recognition they deserved.  She writes:

"The strength and artistry of Fritz Ascher's work has driven me to try change that. In 2014 I founded the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized  Banned Art, which researches, discusses, publishes and exhibits artists whose life and work were affected by the German Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. With our work we commemorate their artistic achievements, introduce work that may have been forgotten to a broad audience, and initiate an active dialogue about individuality and artistic integrity in response to conditions of extreme duress and political tyranny."   

This is God's work for sure. 

Fritz Ascher studied art in Berlin and began a brilliant career only to confront the fearful rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Moving from place to place to avoid capture, he, along with millions of others, could not escape the Gestapo's ruthless hunting rampages.  He was found and sent to Sachsenhauser concentration camp and then to Potsdam  Gestapo prison.

"Art interrupted," as art historians remark with sadness about the Jewish artists of these times.

When released Ascher lived in a bombed out shelter with the help of Martha Graftsmann until the war ended.  He resumed his painting, but his oeuvre came to embody the darkness and emotional terror that overcome his life and that of so many other artists then. 

Ascher's Sunset, at Grey's Gallery, in 2019,NYU's fine
arts gallery in Washington Sq.in Greenwich Village.  

His work lay hidden from public view until Rachel Cohen discovered his paintings and vowed to bring them to light. “The intensity, the strong energy, the colors, the forms,” she said, recalling the first time she saw his work in the mid-80s. "It was love at first sight."  After years of study and research, Cohen is finally bringing Ascher's work to the public, and galleries, art auctions, social media sites, public exhibits, and some media exposure is amplifying the Ascher Society's efforts. Cohen's labor of love is expanding our art universe.

The Ascher Society recognizes as well that while the Nazi terror regime "is certainly the blueprint for authoritarian terror," there are other dictatorial regimes that have suppressed individual and artistic freedom during the 20th century. They deserve recognition too. There was the Stalinist terror of the late 1920s through the 1950s; China's long march terror under Mao ZeDong; Pol Pot in Cambodia; Salazar in Portugal; Franco in Spain, authoritarian takeovers in the Middle East, and in fact up to this 2022 International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

The Ascher Society commemorates those who withstood these powers. I believe with the Ascher Society that by showing their work "we can inspire reflection, creativity and resilience in the face of adversity today...and provide today's audiences and society at large with valuable examples of how humanity can overcome the powers of darkness." 

Sources:

1.  https://fritzaschersociety.org/  "Comparing Ascher’s self-portraits from before and after the War equally proves instructive and offers insight into how Ascher’s psyche and his self-conception evolved as a consequence of his persecution. For an artist, the self remains a compositional subject infinitely in play as something to explore, avoid, grapple with, or deny. In this regard, Ascher’s multi-medium and multi-faceted study of himself and the representation of the inner life prove to be a consistent thread throughout his career."

2.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Ascher 

3.  https://francurrocaryblog.blogspot.com/2020/12/alice-lok-cahana-holocaust-survivor.html

4.  https://borislurieart.org/about-boris-lurie  

5.  https://www.artforum.com/spotlight/boris-lurie-art-foundation-83595 

6.  https://300magazine.com/nightmare-art-inspired-by-war-first-us-exhibition-of-fritz-ascher-works/.  

7.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/if-not-for-the-nazis-he-may-have-been-the-next-leonardo/