Baruch Lopes Leão de Laguna
Baruch Lopes Leão de Laguna (born February 16, 1864 in Amsterdam , † November 19, 1943 in Auschwitz ) was a Dutch painter . He was close to the Laren school .
Life
Baruch de Laguna was born into a Portuguese - Sephardic family in Amsterdam . His parents, Salomão Lopes de Leão Laguna and Sara Kroese , died when he was 11 years old. He then went to an orphanage belonging to the Portuguese-Israelite community in Amsterdam. During this time he began to observe and draw the people around him. At the age of 14 he first trained as a decorative painter at the Quellinus Art School . In 1880 he was accepted at the Reich Academy of Fine Arts , where he a. a. studied with August Allebé .
De Laguna had to leave the orphanage at the age of 17 and moved into an attic apartment with a studio in the Franselaan plantation in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam . He initially worked a. a. in the studio of the painter Jacob Meijer de Haan . He also provided sketches for magazines. A sketch on the first page of the monthly Elsevier made him known to a wider audience. In 1885 his pictures were exhibited at Arti et Amicitiae and received good reviews.
Around 1895 he married Rose Asscher , 8 years his junior , daughter of a London diamond cutter, with whom he had some children. In 1898 the couple moved to Laren in Het Gooi , where there had been an artist colony going back to his friend Jozef Israëls since around 1870 . The family later lived in the neighboring Blaricum in the " Oude Brouwerij ", op de Torenlaan 5, and then in Zwaluwenweg 42. In 1905 he finally had his own house and studio built in Laren, Paadje 18.
De Laguna's particular preference was portraiture . He painted peasants and bankers, servants and women of the world, doctors, artists and politicians. His clients also included celebrities such as the multiple Prime Minister Hendrikus Colijn , the socialist Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis , the industrialist Henri Deterding , the department store owners Sally Berg and Sylvain Kahn u. a. Another focus of work were genre scenes and decorative still lifes with flowers.
His family was very important to De Laguna. When the promising son Martijn died in a motorcycle accident, he and his wife suffered greatly. He threw himself all the more into his work and continued to paint into old age. In 1941 the Jüdisches Wochenblatt Amsterdam wrote in an article about him: " Despite his self-confidence, the 78-year-old artist has remained a modest man who sets high standards for himself. His standards for others reveal his Jewish identity: he regarded injustice as the worst Sin. He loves beautiful and attractive people, but most important to him was a noble character "
In the first years of the occupation of the Netherlands by National Socialist Germany , the De Lagunas were initially able to hide in a remote farm in Laren. As a thank you, he gave some of his pictures, including a self-portrait, to the family who took him in at risk of death. Nevertheless, he and his wife were tracked down and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp . He was murdered there on November 19, 1943. His wife Rosie was also murdered in Auschwitz on February 11, 1944.
Works
Self-portrait
Still life with anemones
Wool spinner at the window
Three girls
mother with child
Bunch of flowers
Portrait of Sylvain Kahn
Web links
literature
- J. van Adrichem (et al.): Rebel, mijn hart: kunstenaars 1940-1945, Zwolle 1995, p. 151
Individual evidence
- ↑ Het Joodsche Weekblad: Een schilder van mensen: Baruch Laguna in zijn atelier , Amsterdam, October 10, 1941, p. 5
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Laguna, Baruch Lopes Leão de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 16, 1864 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Amsterdam |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 19, 1943 |
| Place of death | Auschwitz |