Longing mixed with hope: Art after October 7

Three years ago, Cindy Flash of Kibbutz Kfar Aza (originally from Minnesota) was talking on the phone with her daughter’s mother-in-law, artist Rose Bar-Nur of Gan Yavne (originally from Lviv, Ukraine).

The women, who had become close friends through their children and a shared granddaughter, were both sitting in their protected rooms during a rocket attack from Gaza.

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“We talked on the phone about the concrete that protects us, about the sunlight we left outside,” Bar-Nur recalls. “Our conversations have greatly influenced my paintings.”

On Oct. 7, Cindy and her husband, Igal, were murdered by Hamas terrorists. Their home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza was destroyed.

Art after October 7

“After their murder, for a while I couldn’t go into my studio and touch a pencil. When I finally entered, the subjects of my work changed. Different characters appeared in my drawings than the ones I used to draw. Now the figures began to radiate longing mixed with hope,” says Bar-Nur.

Her current exhibition in Tel Aviv, “Concrete Singing and Other Birds,” is dedicated to the memory of Cindy and Igal Flash. Most of the works on display are pencil drawings.

“As a baby, I was enchanted by the sound of a pencil on paper,” she recalls. “At four, I was impressed by the paintings of fairy tales on the walls of my kindergarten and decided that when I grew up, I would draw all the fairy tales. That was the beginning of my romance with the world of painting, endless pencil sketches on paper.”

Her talent was evident to all her classmates. One day, her fifth-grade teacher in Lviv assigned a drawing as homework. Five girls asked Bar-Nur to execute this assignment for them. Happy to oblige, she drew six similar pictures, and the girls submitted them under their own names.

While all five friends received the highest possible score, Bar-Nur got a disappointing grade. “It was clear to all of us that it was about hatred of Jews, since the teacher’s son, who was also in our class, often expressed himself in an antisemitic way. Even as children, we understood that it came from home,” Bar-Nur recalls.

Her parents, both engineers, had long dreamed of immigrating to Israel. When they finally applied for exit visas, they were fired from their jobs and waited more than a year for an official response to their request.

“They were not defined as refuseniks. The authorities simply ignored them,” Bar-Nur explains.

She was 12, and her sister was four, when permission was granted allowing the family to leave Ukraine.

“I was called into the principal’s office of my school, where, in the presence of all the teachers, she removed my Young Pioneers red tie.” The Young Pioneers was a compulsory youth organization of the Soviet Union for children aged nine to 14.

“The principal proposed an alternative solution so that I would not become a traitor to the state. She suggested that I write a letter requesting to stay in Lviv without my parents. The administration would promise to ‘adopt’ me.”

FORTUNATELY, SHE was able to come along with her family to Israel, arriving in November 1974 – already imbued with a deep appreciation for the Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo architectural styles that her hometown is famous for.

But the family was sent to a very different architectural landscape: an absorption center in Kfar Gevirol near Rehovot that consisted of caravans.

Bar-Nur attended a religious boarding school. Before she learned to communicate in Hebrew, she made friends by drawing pictures for classmates.

Six months later, her parents transferred her to Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts in Givatayim. After two years, she went to a vocational school in Jaffa to learn mechanical drawing. She represented the school in a national competition of young artists and won first place.

Then she applied to the Bat Yam Art Institute and was accepted into the second-year class. The shy 15-year-old was in for a bit of a shock – her classmates, mainly much older post-army students, were sketching nudes.

“With great difficulty, I overcame the embarrassment. In the second semester, a male model appeared,” she recalls. “My continuing embarrassment was solved by my father after he took a look at my portfolio. He solemnly informed me that there was no need to continue studying painting. I quite easily agreed with him.”

Instead, her father bought wooden frames on which he stretched canvases and paid his daughter to paint on them. However, her parents didn’t keep these works; they gave them as gifts.

When she turned 19, Bar-Nur left home and stopped painting. She studied industrial design at the Holon Institute of Technology. She then went on to study architecture, and later taught architecture and interior design at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Ashkelon Academic College, and other institutes of higher learning.

SIX YEARS ago, Bar-Nur took an unpaid two-year leave to go back to painting. She ended up never returning to the classroom. She’s been painting full time in her home studio ever since.

“The decisive stage in my work is the beginning. Before I touch the page or canvas, I read material and analyze the subject. Then I move to the planning stage, desired composition, tone and color scale, appropriate textures, etc. Only after settling these issues do I turn to the canvas.”

Bar-Nur and her husband, a Hungarian immigrant, live in “a pastoral village called Gan Yavne, east of Ashdod. This is a second marriage for both of us. When we met, I had two children, and Peter had three. So, together we have five children.”

She says that the biggest challenge she has faced is managing all the dramatic changes in her life.

“My great achievements, in my eyes, are not material or those that are distinguished and judged outside. It is about feelings, such as completeness, completion with myself, inner balance, and a loving attitude toward those around me,” she says.

Rose Bar-Nur’s exhibition is on display through June 22 at the Global Art Gallery, 13 Merkaz Ba’alei Melaha St., Tel Aviv. 

ROSE BAR-NUR, 62FROM LVIV, 1974 TO ISRAEL TO GAN YAVNE, 2006

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