Exhibition
The series of works DRAWING AGAINST OBLIVION moves you with its intensity and humanity.
The artist Manfred Bockelmann manages to uniquely get the youngest victims of the Nazi regime out of the darkness of being forgotten into the light of being recognised and remembered.
“I want to get these children back out of the darkness, and I will continue to draw my portraits as long as I can.”
Film
The film DRAWING AGAINST OBLIVION documents the creation of Manfred Bockelmann’s series of works by the same name. In powerful pictures, carried by the intensity of the artist’s undertaking, this film bows to the countless children who were murdered by the Nazis, and with distressing stories at the same time reminds us of those who survived and still live with the incomprehensible past today.
The contemporary witnesses
Drawings
It is not the death but the life in the charcoal portraits that touches us so much. The life that is reflected in the eyes and faces of the countless murdered children.
It is as if Manfred Bockelmann has seen the souls of the most innocent victims of Nazi terror and drawn them on five-foot black-and-white canvasses. They leave you speechless, aghast and shaken.
“No one cried for these children and it would be wonderful if one could make up for that now.”
[Manfred Bockelmann]
