Remembering Janka

       

The second floor of the Museum of the North is home to a very special woman. Her name is Janka Glueck Gruenberger and she has been made immortal through the work of artist Robby Mohatt. “I Remember Janka” is an oil and alkyd based painting done on a canvas approximately 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Despite it being one of the larger paintings in the museum, its size is not what shocks you. It was the vibrant red stain in the center of the canvas. At first, you cannot seem to pull your eyes away from this focal point. After some time you begin to notice lines of yellow, grey, and black attempting to hold a shape that could be deciphered as some kind of written language. It is not until after a few minutes of frustration burning through your eyes, much as the red paint seems to burn a hole through the dark stained canvas around it, when you rejoice at the sighting of a recognizable word about one-third of the way down from top of the massive painting.

It is not loudly written, nor does it seem to demand any attention as it speaks the name “Janka” without any expectations. Etched into a stroke of grey paint are the numbers “6174319”, reviling the focal red beneath it, to once again steal your attention. The edges of the painting, extending beyond the red blur in the figure-ground, is a dark grey layer stained with brown and darker grays. The piece makes you feel sad, almost disturbed, but it also demands your attention. The brush strokes are heavy and deliberate.  The angry small paint lumps strewn about give it a careless feeling. The yellow scrolling of non-existent words catches your eye and attempt to distract you. These brush strokes appear light and effortless.

While I was observing this piece, a fellow class mate walked up to the description and immediately I told her not to read it before simply looking at the piece first. While there is much going on to the eye, even more is going on in the mind. Before diving in immediately into the why’s and who’s of the work, we should first let the painting ask us those questions. We look at it with no idea what it is about, allowing the red to ignite your mind into understanding that although it is at first large brush strokes on a dull background, there is truly a story and purpose inside.

This painting was done as a memorial to Janka Glueck Gruenberger. The artist visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C, and walked around with the Auschwitz victim’s biography. He was moved by the experience that he decided to honor the silent life, one of too many whose lives were written on cards. This painting is painful to look at, even before you notice the description, it also demands to be noticed. The tragedy of the Holocaust is similar, being that the loss of lives were many, so significant that we want to look away from the sadness it brings in us. But it is not something that can go unnoticed, it too demands our attention. Every individual life lost in the Holocaust deserves to be remembered in our memory, just as Robby Mohatt remembers Janka.