Steven Less and Hannah-Lea Wasserfuhr join us, with moderator Bob Stein, as well as discussants Rachel Stern and Ester Shifren, for p4 of our Jewish People in China mini-series.
Born in Berlin, John Hans Less (1923 – 2011) fled as a 16-year-old together with his family to Shanghai in September 1940 to escape the Nazis. His uprooting and struggle to survive the precarious conditions he encountered as a stateless refugee, including confinement by the Japanese to the Hongkew Ghetto, deeply affected both his life and art. Notwithstanding the contribution he was able to make from his merger earnings as a commercial artist and support from Jewish aid organizations, the family’s future remained tenuous. He refused, however, to resign himself to the situation and forsake his wider artistic ambitions. From the visual record he kept of his experience, mostly in the form of rough sketches, he created a series of watercolors and oil paintings decades after immigrating to the USA in 1947. The works relating to his Holocaust refuge in Shanghai are more than reflections on a traumatized youth or flight from Nazi persecution; in them, he experimented with various styles and deconstructed stereotypical European perceptions of Asian culture. Thus, they also form part of a much bigger story about European-Asian encounters and European fascination with an “exotic” Orient.
Admission/Cost: FREE Register
Location:
Online Streaming Event
Sunday, March 20 - 10:00 PM to 11:30 PMM
