Description
Savu Petra Dan: * 1903, Bucharest †1986, Frankfurt am Main
Execution: oil on canvas
Date: 1969
Dimensions: 62 x 50 cm
Signed: lower right
Provenance: original work from artist’s estate.
Savu Petra Dan was a Romanian-Israeli artist.
He graduated from the Art Academy in Bucharest from 1926 to 1933. A few years later he was hired by King Carol II of Romania as a
Court Painter and later received the title of Minister of Education and Culture.
1942 to 1945: During World War II, Dan was a concentration camp inmate at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In his late works, the artist often dealt with the suffering experiences of this time in the concentration camp. In 1946 Dan received an award from the Romanian Ministry of Culture.
In 1961 he emigrated to Israel with his wife Thereza (1913 – 1976) and finally moved to Germany in 1974, living in Frankfurt until his death in 1986.
Savu Petra Dan preferred works in oil on canvas. The early work of Savu Petra Dan was strongly influenced by expressionism. In his late work Savu Petra Dan also painted in surrealist manner.
In addition to portraits and landscape compositions, he created very expressive paintings – in reappraisal of his horrific experiences during the Second World War and the agonizing struggle of man for life and death experienced there.
In Germany, the artist is listed in the “Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Saur”.
The internationally known artist sold more than numerous of his works to the USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa during his lifetime. His works were acquired by museums, including the Helena Rubinstein Museum in Tel Aviv and the Bucharest National Museum. Likewise, he was presented in numerous exhibitions.
Some exhibitions he held together with his wife Tereza Dan, who was also an artist. In the art criticism of Israel his works were outstandingly reviewed, one compares his works with the works of the famous painters Eugen Delacroix and Theodore Gericault.
Savu Petra Dan died in 1986 in Frankfurt am Main. An adequate appreciation by the city of Frankfurt am Main, which his wife advocated during his lifetime, has unfortunately not been forthcoming to this day.
His entire oeuvre, as well as his painterly documented experiences of the Holocaust, are of special historical significance and deserve to remain unforgotten.
