Thanks to the efforts of ESLI, Yehuda Bacon had his first ever exhibition in the Czech Republic.
The opening of “Returns,” a retrospective exhibition of artwork by Czech native and leading Israeli painter Yehuda Bacon, took place between September 9th and 30th, 2011, at the Czech Center in Prague. From its inception ESLI was instrumental in making the exhibition possible and supported the compilation of the artist’s biographical information. Yehuda Bacon was born in 1929 and was deported with his parents and sister to Terezín, and thereafter to Auschwitz. After liberation, he returned to Czechoslovakia as an orphan, and in 1946 he left for Palestine.
His talent as a painter came out in Terezín, and for a short time after the war he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Once in Jerusalem he was accepted into the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and following several artist residencies abroad he became a full professor at the Bezalel Academy.
Bacon’s outlook on art and life has been greatly influenced by prominent representatives of Central Europe, such as Otto Ungar, Bedřich Fritta, Leo Haas, and Karel Fleichsmann, who were imprisoned in Terezin, and the humanistic thinkers and personalities including Přemysl Pittr, H.G. Adler, Max Brod, Martin Buber, and Gershom Scholem.
A witness for the prosecution during the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials in 1963–65, Yehuda Bacon continues to be active in promoting Christian-Jewish and German-Jewish dialogue.