Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (18.2018)

8. Sasza Blonder/ Andre
Blondel and Louise Blondel
(nee Bonfils), Carcassonne,
May 1946, photo from the
collection of Helene Feydy-
Blondel and Marc Blondel.
-> see p. 159
9. Sasza Blonder / Andre
Blondel, Birth, oil on ply-
wood, 1944, Helene Feydy-
Blondel collection.
10. Sasza Blonder / Andre
Blondel, Mother with a child
in a pram, oil on plywood,
1946, Marc Blondel’s
collection.
->see p. 160

Rosenstein and Maria Jarema left, while they stayed on. When the war broke out,
everything in their lives changed. The relationship with Berta Griinberg, which
had been wavering for some time now, finally broke down when the artist met
a Frenchman, Louise Bonfils (see: Fig. 8), a talented chemistry and physics teacher
who would soon become his wife and mother of their two children.
When writing about the artist in 1970, Helena Blum admitted that his life in
France after the war was not easy, and that he struggled with constant financial
difficulties. At the same time, he did not lack reasons for joy: he found a circle of
friends; he found understanding for his art; and a happy family.12 Was this really so?
Perhaps in time he actually learned to notice the positive aspects of events that took
place in his life. It is difficult to say unequivocally, because the memoirs he had been
writing end abruptly in 1943. However, what he wrote before 1943 paints a slightly
different picture of the situation. The extremely difficult wartime circumstances
could have had an impact on this. After the outbreak of war, the artist enlisted
in the Polish Army. After demobilization, he was active in the French resistance
movement and was hiding in the south of France. In 1943, under the new name
Andre Blondel, he married Louise Bonfils, and they were expecting their child to
be born soon. In his life this was a really difficult period. Often, as never before, in
his memoirs, we find words of despair, passion and hopelessness.
He is hiding his real identity from his surroundings; he feels foreign in the
environment in which he came to live. He can appreciate the beauty of the French
landscape, but at the same time he writes about it as something unnatural, artificial.
“I am thinking about the landscape of our country, about a different kind of light”,
he adds.13 Once again, he realises something beyond the link with the place that
he left, but also, for the first time with such force, he realises the significance of
his Jewish roots. He wrote about this in a captivating way in 1943, in his memoirs:
“When I think that death could suddenly surprise me here, where I am considered
something other than I really am, then I know I would not want to be buried in
another cemetery and among those of another faith, [but rather] in the place that
I come from. I do not know if there are any Jews here, either buried or alive some-
where. [...] I would like to manifest that I am with them and from them. [...] My
whole being, with its bad sides and its good sides, can be explained [...] against the
background of its true origin. I was subjected and I continue to be subjected to all
the horrors that pursue my confreres, and I do not want to hide - either for shame
or forgetfulness - what should instead be known”.14
He was burdened with the necessity of hiding, the awareness of his own otherness.
He realized that his experience was completely alien to the people he lived among.
And yet he never returned to his home country. In fact, he did not have any reason
to return, not any morę. The war had swept away almost everything that was dear
to him. His family perished, and his hometown of Chortkiv now became part of the
Soviet Union. Paris and France probably failed to bring him happiness or peace -
just like any of the places he drifted between in his short forty-year life - although
12 H.Blum, Wstęp, in: Sasza Blonder - Andre Blondel 1909-1949 [exhibition catalogue of the
National Museum in Kraków, Stowarzyszenie Artystyczne Grupa Krakowska], Kraków 1970,
p. 16.
13 Diary of Sasza Blonder from 1936-1943, entry from September 7,1943, p. 73, in possession of
the artists family.
14 Ibidem, pp. 71-71.

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ARTICLES

Natasza Styrna