Sonia Gurfein - Sculptures Made of Galvanized Iron
    and Stainless Steel
    by Dorit Kedar, Ph.D., 1998

On Sonia Gurfein's Works
    by Itta Gertner, 1993

Sonia Gurfein 
    by Hadara Shaflan, 1988
    Olam Ha'omanut, no. 30

People Ascending to Heaven
    by Aviva Metz, 1987
    Maariv Daily Newspaper

Sonia Gurfein began painting in her late childhood, during the Nazi regime, as a captive in a concentration camp near Kovna. Though she had been drawing the portraits of S.S. officers and their family members in the camp in order to survive, there is no sign, now, of these hated portraits. Gurfein has survived the Holocaust. 

Sonia Gurfein immigrated to Israel with a strong will to begin a new life. With this optimistic spirit, she began to paint vigorously forms from nature. A part of the landscapes and figures in her paintings are the fruits of her rich imagination, which has been providing her with infinite ideas for new paintings. One idea gives birth to a second, and she constantly tries to follow her own rhythm. Thus, the artist finds herself standing in front of the painting pad, enjoying the brush strokes, which lead her in surprising ways. In these magic moments, she turns into the viewer of her own creations, curious to see how will the painting end. She wonders whether the painting is finished or not; if she will go back to it in the future or leave it untouched. 

The exhibition "Between Heaven and Earth" invites the viewer to meet the artist through her paintings. They seem optimistic, but each has a story of his own and the title of the exhibition hints to polar moods, to the extremities in her spiritual life, and to the will to enlighten it with colors. 

This is an intimate show that allows the viewer to pip into the artist's world and feel the joy of compiling mixed emotions through a rich palette of colors and a total freedom of forms. For Sonia Gurfein, painting is the lane of Life, and she steps within the optimistic colors and forms that she chooses to paint her life with. 

Small sculptures that do not consider the aspect of Time. 
At least they do not challenge Time, made of resistible material, needing no additional items to be strengthened. 

Sculptures which do not struggle with space. 
They stand humbly, loiter about, as if not touching the lower area. 

Very light, they reflect what Is, permeable to air, sights, the Void. 

Tending back and forth, supple, convergent, thrusting out. 

Female in their curved lines and male because of the right angles. 

Graphic and flat from the pictorial point of view, yet stable, standing existing in Space. 

Delicate they do not aspire to heights without seeing Width, always conscious of the natural sizes. 

Like musical variations intended for the finest string instruments, reminding the rustle of canes blown by the wind. 

Because of their flexibility - they survive and Are. 

.
Sonia Gurfein stands for ways of constant renewal and innovation, realized through materials, which are taken out of Light Industry and project a sense of temporariness. 

That is from first look. 

A second look will discover the reference to dreams and wishes, a willingness to take off and fly, spread the wings and celebrate Life. 

On a further level, the doubt and wonder are arisen. The spirit wants to take off but it is entangled within obstructing tiny metal wires. 

The vulnerability of the materials hints to an unwillingness or warning: do not touch. Take a step backward. The work is transparent as a spider web, and vibrates the membrane of the soul like the sound of a string. 

In the work process, it is possible to bend and connect, but not much force is needed. The silver color is simultaneously cold and synthetic on the one hand, and attractive and magnetizing on the other hand. 

From the tenseness, a feeling of obstruction arises, and with it - the need to break through. 

The momentum of untouching allows a connection mostly in the levels of feelings and spiritual energy.

On my first visit to Sonia Gurfein's studio, I was mainly attracted by the latest series of paintings. I pulled out three paintings and laid them, vertically, on the wall. Later I understood that I was totally mistaken. Furthermore, I realized the dual nature of Gurfein's creation, making it change totally when looking at it from a different angle. 

This is a seemingly abstract series of paintings ranging from light grayish to strong and expressive colors. The canvas is totally covered with amorphous stains of paint, emphasized by a curved black line, which frames some of the stains and crosses the others. 

My mistake was a result of intuitive associations to Matisse' creation, mainly to his female nudes, both in his paintings and sculptures. This female model in the typical pose of the hands laying on the head, with the flowing curved lines, is present in Gurfein's works too - but only if you look at them in their wrong vertical position. Thus we can find a happy Bacchanalia of colors and figures, swinging and embracing. A right look at their horizontal position discovers an opposite atmosphere: the figures lay, naked, in a pile of dead bodies, a hole of horrors submerged deep in Gurfein's memory. These memories have just recently been freed and allowed to get out of the darkness into the enlightened surface. 

Gurfein paints from early age. Not many have been nicknamed "the little painter", a nickname that was given to her in a concentration camp in Lithuania during the Holocaust. Her natural talent helped her, in a grotesque way, to survive through drawings and paintings of Christmas cards and portraits of German officers. 

Since then she has been making figurative paintings only. But she was frustrated: "I saw that when I'm painting a figure, I get attached to it, incapable to get free. In the art schools I was jealous of the students that could choose any color in order to paint a person. I just couldn't paint a blue person... something in me honors very much every human being and they cannot be blue in my paintings. Even now, when I'm free from figurative figures and objects, my figures are painted with peach colors". 

This last series of yours is essentially different from former works; what happened? I ask Gurfein. "The turning point was my meeting with John Byle, my teacher. Under his guidance I could finally run wild with experiments in different techniques. I discovered the power to free myself through art activity. I know that I'm a literary painter, but I can get really free only through abstract painting... I cannot make an abstraction of an object, only the abstraction of a concept".

In these few words, Gurfein explains the dual aspect of her work and the ways in which she can get the best of herself. These characteristics are best present in her better paintings: they are abstract, but beyond the abstraction there are hidden figurativeness and literariness.

Every painting in which the artist attempts to picture realities through observation of a model is relatively wick compared to the ones in which she closes her eyes, takes out the inner occurrences and creates a work out of them. These paintings are fascinating, both from an artistic-esthetic and an iconographic point of view. These two points of view make one search and follow the creative process, but both hide more than they show; the artwork remains a mystery.

Following the process is difficult (especially in the last painting): despite the clear handwork, the Baroque-like spin mixes up the analytic senses and leaves them out almost impotent. The brush strokes are dynamic, colorful, curved, full of paint. The figures engraved within the colorful stormy sea show up and disappear immediately; they are framed in a free curved line. They turn into amoebas, tadpoles, loops. The landscape penetrates them and they - a part of it.

Deciphering the iconographic hints will discover the fact that only recently has Gurfein begun to deal with the theme of Holocaust: "in the Holocaust I ran away from the fears. I kept telling myself not to be afraid and stay clear minded. Now I understand that I didn't really experience the fears... I swallowed them". Only now can the artist work out her fears. This has begun with light, romantic steps (in the first painting, which is more literary and depicts the earth and ash with pastel gray colors), which have developed into an eruption of anger (in the last, expressive painting).

Gurfein, who has, in the past, turned the memories into a vague dream, "as if nothing has ever happened", woke up. The illusion of dreams disappeared in order to give space for a recollection of the pieces of memory, into a new perception, wide-awake and courageous. In the end of the day I was surprised to find out that I am facing an essentially optimistic person, one who doesn't "live and breath" the Holocaust, but rather an artist who, in her young age, painted "everything but Holocaust", and in her mature years developed an original new treatment of this personal and collective trauma. 

How many years does one need in order to be able to take traumas out of his soul? If forty years are enough, then Sonia Gurfein did it. Only now she begins to get free. In Wilna, where she was born, Gurfein was a talented child. She has always been drawing. When the Germans conquered the area and put her in a concentration camp, she didn't realized that this talent of hers will save her life. 

Now Gurfein knows. She is no longer a child. A woman of almost sixty. A painter who respects her art. In the last twelve years she didn't stop painting. She learned the techniques, but her inner truth gets out now in powerful bursts, without control. "One day", she says, "I discovered that all my paintings were full of strange figures. I didn't remember having planned this, but the result was clear to me. These were the anonymous figures, the shadows from 'there'. Unidentified faces. A flow of people". 

In the camp in Lithuania she was fourteen. She worked like all the other Jews with a yellow patch on her chest. Hard labor for the Germans. An impudent child with great powers. "All I wished for was to survive", she says. 

And she did. "One day I approached a fat, frightening German officer, and asked him if he would like me to illustrate Christmas cards for him. The officer gave me papers and pens and ordered: draw! They must have been pretty nice drawings, as later on they asked me to draw portraits. I prepared a portrait of the Head of the camp, as a birthday present. They were very pleased and, as a result, excused me from any other work. I turned to be the portrait artist of the camp. Thanks to that, I received additional portions of food and could support my mother. Later on, our camp was dismantled and some of us, including me, were transferred to another camp. No one knows what happened to those who were not transferred with us. 

In Israel, Gurfein experienced the expected difficulties of a new comer. She worked in housekeeping and other temporary jobs. She didn't draw a line. "I was mentally exhausted. I had used all my energies in the war. I didn't find the strength to cause myself to speak through painting. I was not yet ready. All I wanted was to create a nest of my own". 

Her nest is now a solid one. A successful husband and three children. And now she finally returned to painting. Returned with all her strength. A year ago she created "the" painting: a huge amount of people ascending to Heaven. The earth is dark and soaked. The sky is bright, open to air and light. 'Optimism', she says. It takes a lot of optimism and strength in order to reveal the past and see a pink sky.