Malvina Kaplan

1913 - 1987

Malvina Kaplan (nee Kaminer) was born in Lodz, Poland to a devout Jewish family, which despite their religious observance supported her artistic tendencies. As a child, a Polish painter used to come to the family home to teach her painting.
In 1937, she began studying at the Warsaw Academy of Art but was forced to leave in 1939 when the war broke out.

In 1940, she married Moshe Kaplan and they moved to Czestochowa, whence they were deported to the ghetto. Just before the ghetto’s liquidation, they managed to get forged documents, and under assumed identities as Poles they went to Germany, where they worked on an agricultural property, and in a factory. Malvina’s Jewish identity was discovered, and in 1944, she was transported to Auschwitz, and from there to Ravensbrück and Malchow.

In spring 1945, she was transferred to Sweden, under the aegis of the Red Cross in Count Bernadotte’s rescue operation. There she was reunited with her husband. In 1947, the couple immigrated to Israel. Malvina studied at the Avni Institute of Art and Design, and was a member of the Israel Association of Painters and Sculptors.

Her Work

Kaplan worked in oils, watercolor and mixed media. She spent her summers at her studio in the artists' quarter in Safed. Initially, Kaplan was influenced by the Polish impressionist painting on which she grew up. Upon her arrival in Israel, she began to change her style by connecting with the modern currents that were growing at that time. At the beginning of her inclination to modern art, her works were mostly figurative, especially impressions of the desert landscapes of the country. These paintings were performed in bright and warm colors of red and yellow, placed dynamically and sharply. Although these paintings were figurative, their tendency for abstract painting was already apparent. In the mid-1960s, Kaplan began creating collages, carefully planned and designed, and even dedicated a solo exhibition to this style.

She used papers on which she drew instead of the commonly used newspapers or magazines. These works usually connected with her experiences of the Holocaust on the one hand, and the joy of living in Israel on the other. In the 1970s, her paintings were mostly abstract, with a vivid and bright array of colors. On the one hand, she tried to put balance and calm in the paintings, but on the other hand she often had trouble stopping her flow of emotions.

Education

 1937 Warsaw Academy of Arts, Warsaw, Poland

 1947 Avni Art Institute, Tel Aviv

Teaching  Painting classes, Israel

Solo Exhibitions

1988 Retrospective 1947-1986, Artist House, Tel Aviv 

1981 Pastel paintings, The Haifa Museum of Modern Art 

1973 Paintings – Minatures, Dugit Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

 1970 Nahmani Gallery, Haifa 

1968 Collages, Dugit Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

 1964 Abstract paintings, The Marc Chagall Artists' House 

1962 Malvina Kaplan - Solo exhibition, The Gallery 220, Tel-Aviv