Living Soul, Sylva Zalmanson exhibition in Jerusalem 2015

Devorah Goldberg, curator of the exhibition “A Living Soul” for Sylva Zalmanson, wrote: “The work of Sylva Zalmanson is a symbolic expression of the meaningful experiences of her life. The exhibition includes a series showing images of farm animals – lambs and rams, which were prominently represented in her art with a variety of features attributed to them. The works were painted in oil and acrylic, and are characterized by the materials used – which includes a mix of sawdust which gives a textured look.

Sylva Zalmanson, a resident of Gan Yavne, was born and raised in Riga, Latvia during the period when it was part of the Soviet Union. As an adult, she studied mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute in her home town. In 1970, she was arrested and accused of illegal activities as a result of an attempt to escape from her homeland. Following a show trial which was held against the group to which she belonged, together with her husband (the First Leningrad Trial), she was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. In the wake of the trial, there were global protests which illustrated the lack of freedom for Soviet Jews, and brought about her early release. In 1974, she was released and she immigrated to Israel. In the years that followed, until her retirement about 10 years ago, she worked at Israel Aircraft Industries. Since 1992, she studied in an art workshop with a group of artists from Ashdod, among whom were the artist, Lina Golan and the sculptor, Herman Kronhaus. For many years now, she has been showing her work in solo and group exhibitions in Israel and throughout the world.

The perception in which the lamb or the ram are intended, by nature, to be used as victims, began with the story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis:22), where a ram is sacrificed in place of Isaac. The visual representation of this image, among other things, shows that man would sacrifice his life for a good cause. For example, in early Christian art, the lamb represents Jesus, who sacrificed his life for mankind. In contemporary Israeli art, the work of Menashe Kadishman (1932-2015) can be singled out, where he uses the images of lambs and rams to represent the boys who gave their lives in the wars of Israel (In the Eretz-Israeli art from the first half of the 20th century represents this image as actually belonging to this place and connecting it to the patriarchs.)

Zalmanson’s choice of lambs and rams as the subject of her paintings can be interpreted, in an indirect way, as a description of the Jewish community in the Soviet Union, whose lives were under constant threat from the cruel and arbitrary rule of the government, without the ability to defend themselves. Like Kadishman, Zalmanson also paints portraits of individual items. The way she portrays human facial expressions on the animals, emphasizes the uniqueness of every item in the group and implies that she wanted to represent humans in her drawings of the animals.

Similarly, the exhibition includes a series of paintings of Flamenco dancing.

Sylva captures the movement and the magic and enchants the viewer with the Flamenco dance: The dresses which are generously low-cut and swaying, the circling movement, the expressiveness, creates a magic, using vivid colors and a mixed media to create a three-dimensional image.

Through the canvas, she seeks to express emotion, freedom of expression and a passion for dance that blends with the rhythm and sounds of the music. The connection to Flamenco intensified in 2002, when she traveled to Barcelona and watched a hypnotic performance of Flamenco – a dance of strong and passionate women. From that moment, she felt captivated by the dance and began painting Flamenco using all her senses: Powerful Flamenco, colorful, passionate and stormy.