Tel Aviv artist draws on Picasso's 'Guernica' to paint the horrors of the Oct.7 Hamas attacks

Record ID: 1759555

  • Title: Tel Aviv artist draws on Picasso's 'Guernica' to paint the horrors of the Oct.7 Hamas attacks
  • Date: 4th January 2024
  • Summary: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (RECENT - DECEMBER 26, 2023) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER ZOYA CHERKASSKY TOUCHING UP HER PAINTING ENTITLED '7 OCT. 2023' (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "When I heard what happened and... and first of all, I thought it happened only in Be'eri Kibbutz, because the information that we were getting, it was coming gradually. And... then when I read what happened, I immediately thought of Guernica (a famous black and white painting by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso about the Basque town of Guernica, in Spain, that was bombed by German forces in 1937 and depicting the horrors of war), because this is what my cultural memory brought me. And the... and this is also why this first image that I made is based on... it's like a quote in Guernica. It's, like, not really reminds Guernica. But there is a quotation from this painting." VARIOUS OF CHERKASSKY TOUCHING UP HER PAINTING '7 OCT. 2023' (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "You know, for me it was sort of 'déja vu', because when I woke up on the morning of 24th of February 2022, I had a similar feeling, like, I woke up and I've seen that Kyiv was bombed, and it was like, the same way, unbelievable as reading what happened in the... in the south of Israel." VARIOUS OF CHERKASSKY'S PAINTING '7 OCT. 2023' (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "Because, you know, like, also in Ukraine, it was, like... for me it was totally unexpected because I know, like, now looking backwards, I understand that it was, like, it was clear that is gonna to happen. But me, on 23rd of February, I was saying, 'Nothing will happen, everything is fine.' And then I woke up, and I've seen these unbelievable pictures from... actually, it was my neighborhood in Kyiv, because it's, like, the northern part of the city. So this is how... like, I've seen, like, Russian tanks on the street of Kyiv. And it was, like, unbelievable. And on 7th of October, I had friends from St. Petersburg in my house, and they said, 'Look, in the news, they are write there are the terrorists are coming... going from house to house and they kidnapped and killed people.' And I said 'This is your fake Russian news. It can't be,' you know?" CHERKASSKY PREPARING TO MIX PAINT (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "I went to Germany on the second day, on eighth of October I already went to Germany, because my daughter is really afraid of alarms, so I decided to take her out, because we didn't know what was going to happen, you know.. so... So, I said, 'Okay, I will go to Berlin.' So, I went to Berlin, and I started drawing in Berlin." (SOUNDBITE PARTIALLY OFF CAMERA / LOOKING AT SKETCHES FOR 'GRANDMA AND GRANDPA' PAINTING) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "This is actually how my... how my process goes. Like, I start with, like, small... small vignettes to... just to find the... just to find the position of the characters in my... in my show... in my painting. And then I did, like, the final sketch. And after... after the final sketch is done, I just trace it through the window... I just put it like that on the window, and trace it into a new page." NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (JANUARY 2, 2024) (REUTERS) CHERKASSKY'S 'GRANDMA AND GRANDPA' PAINTING ON DISPLAY AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM, SHOWING AN ELDERLY COUPLE WITH THEIR HANDS TIED BEHIND THEIR BACKS PAINTINGS HANGING IN CHERKASSKY'S EXHIBITION TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (RECENT - DECEMBER 26, 2023) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "I was reading about people who were hiding in their shelters when the terrorists break in their houses, and I actually, like, I even have friends on Facebook who... who were there, and they were, like, reporting, like, 'There are terrorists in my house' and things like that. So this is actually the... this is the situation." CHERKASSKY TOUCHING UP HER PAINTING '7 OCT. 2023' VARIOUS OF CHERKASSKY's '7 OCT. 2023' PAINTING CHERKASSKY TOUCHING UP HER PAINTING '7 OCT. 2023' (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "There was, like, a story of how mothers tried to keep their babies quiet so they cover their mouth with their hand to keep their babies quiet so that the terrorists would not find them." CHERKASSKY's '7 OCT. 2023' PAINTING (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "Of course, of course this was the subject because I couldn't think about anything else. And it was similar to what happened when Ukrainian... when the war in Ukraine started, because I also did like a series of, like, I think it's even same amount, like, 12 drawings based on the... based on, like, I don't know, emotional... emotional state of this moment, you know?" CHERKASSKY TOUCHING UP HER PAINTING '7 OCT. 2023' (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "When everything in your life changes, this is the only.... the only thing that stays the same, like I'm still... I'm still a painter no matter... no matter what." CHERKASSKY TOUCHING UP HER PAINTING '7 OCT. 2023' VARIOUS OF CHERKASSKY'S STUDIES ONE IN BLACK AND WHITE WITH PILE OF BODIES ANOTHER WITH WEEPING SOLDIERS. (SOUNDBITE OFF CAMERA) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING, STARTS OVER THE SMALL STUDY/PAINTING OF WEEPING SOLDIERS: "With this image, many people got angry on Instagram, because it's, like, crying soldiers and, you know, that for them, soldiers are not human. But... But for me, you know, they could be my daughters." (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI-UKRAINIAN PAINTER, ZOYA CHERKASSKY, SAYING: "I just want to show the experience of... through the eyes of an Israeli, because it's, like, not... doesn't really have space and doesn't really... it's not really present... because... because, like, there is a lot... a lot of cases when, like, the Jewish or Israeli voices are being silenced about these events. So, it was, like, important for me to... to make it sound, you know." NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (JANUARY 2, 2024) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF CHERKASSKY'S EXHIBIT AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM THE JEWISH MUSEUM, DIRECTOR, JAMES SNYDER, LOOKING AT CHERKASSKY'S EXHIBIT (SOUNDBITE) (English) THE JEWISH MUSEUM, DIRECTOR, JAMES SNYDER, SAYING: "I was here the other day. Visitors were standing in line, quietly, to come in, reading the text outside, which was very carefully written, really carefully written to make the point that what we're trying to do is to show our dismay over the challenges of this tragedy, and really to call for the restoration of the kind of humanism that produces cultural heritage that we, as museums, are responsible for preserving over time. And so, visitors were standing there reading the text, coming in, and moving in a very quiet and careful way throughout the exhibition, and to see the way in which they were absorbing what they were seeing and clearly responding to it was something quite moving for us." VARIOUS OF CHERKASSKY'S '7 OCT. 2023' PAINTING DISPLAYED AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM VARIOUS OF CHERKASSKY'S 'GRANDMA AND GRANDPA' PAINTING VARIOUS OF CHERKASSKY'S 'THE TERRORIST ATTACK AT NOVA MUSIC FESTIVAL' CHERKASSKY'S EXHIBITION AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM
  • Embargoed: 18th January 2024 07:10
  • Keywords: Hamas Israel Zoya Cherkassky conflict hostages painter war
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Middle East
  • Reuters ID: LVA001936302012024RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: For Ukrainian-Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky, the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel felt like living through her own ‘Guernica’, referring to Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s bold black and white painting of the horrors of war when Germany bombed the town of Guernica, northern Spain, in 1937.
    “Because this is what my cultural memory brought me. And the... and this is also why this first image that I made is based on... it's like a quote in Guernica. It's, like, not really reminds Guernica. But there is a quotation from this painting," she said in Tel Aviv last month.
    As news of the attacks on Israeli communities unfolded that day, she was also reminded of the war in her native Ukraine when Russia launched an invasion in February 2022 and attacked cities including Kyiv. Cherkassky was born in Ukraine and emigrated with her parents to Israel when she was 14 years old in 1991.
    “When I woke up on the morning of 24th of February 2022, I had a similar feeling, like, I woke up and I've seen that Kyiv was bombed,” Cherkassky said.
    So she immediately decided to move her daughter out of the country.
    "I went to Germany on the second day, on eighth of October I already went to Germany," Cherkassky said in her studio in southern Tel Aviv's Kiriyat Hamelacha (or 'workers campus') area. "Because my daughter is really afraid of alarms, so I decided to take her out, because we didn't know what was going to happen, you know.. so... So, I said, 'Okay, I will go to Berlin.' So, I went to Berlin, and I started drawing in Berlin."
    The result was 12 small-format paintings of scenes from the day of the Hamas attacks that Cherkassky found in the press and social media of people hiding in shelters, mothers trying to keep their children quiet, and elders taken into captivity.
    Cherkassky's depiction of Oct. 7 are now on display at The Jewish Museum in New York, in the United States. The twelve small works she painted in Berlin went to New York whilst she returned to Tel Aviv on December 1, to start on the bigger renditions.
    The museum director, James Snyder, said visitors were very quiet and reflective when they looked at Cherkassky's striking and bold paintings.
    "To see the way in which they were absorbing what they were seeing and clearly responding to it was something quite moving for us," Snyder said.
    (Production: Aleksandra Michalska, Hussein Al Waaile, Madeleine Stix)
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