The exhibition, “To Paint is to Live” highlights the life and works of Erich Lichtblau-Leskly, a Czech Jewish painter from Moravia whose peaceful life with his wife Elsa and promising career as a commercial designer were shattered following the Nazi partition and subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia. Following the invasion, they moved to Prague and were eventually deported to Theresienstadt.

Though imprisoned and forced into slave labor, Lichtblau-Leskly continued to use art to express himself, document life around him, and make sense of the horrid situation. His satiric, cartoonish representations of daily life in Theresienstadt juxtapose shocking scenes of banal brutality with a light, ironic style, exposing the absurdity and audacity of his and other’s experience while remaining jarringly human. Miraculously kept secret and saved by his wife, Lichtblau-Leskly’s originals are collected and displayed next to restored, further detailed pieces from the artist’s life in Israel after the war.