Jewish Artist: Sarah Kaliski, Facing the Killers

Since the 1980s, Sarah Kaliski has neglected her work as a painter for that of an exceptional and radical graphic designer, which brings her closer to Louise Bourgeois or Kiki Smith.

She obsessively explores, in view of the loss of her father in the mass extermination camps and other secret sorrows, subjects that constitute her identity: Nazi horrors, belgitude (through Jacques Brel, Henri Michaux or the Simenon brothers), violence against children and the claim to be a woman in love, free from all obstacles.

In her drawings, figures are recurrent: her siblings; children in love with birds, howling, hurtful dogs sometimes searching, as in Unica Zorn, of their language a female sex.

She began to mix her drawings with words, those of others (André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Jonathan Littell) before giving way to her own, borrowing as much from American comics (as Wolinski did) as from mannerism, graffiti and oriental calligraphy.

Just before her death she published three books which are masterpieces: “Le -X- ne peut cacher le nom vous dites ?”, “Michaux le -N- de Henri se balade” and “quel est ton nom. Small? Louis Ferdinand Céline”.

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