The healing power of art: Karman Aron’s skill helped him survive the Nazi camps and the long years that followed.

Kalman Aron – a prolific artist – portraits and landscapes.

I have just finished reading about this incredible man.

Painting portraits of soldiers and officers in the Nazi war camps to gain a scrap of food or relief from hard labour. After the war, when he moved to the US, his paintings were his release.  He was unable to speak of the horrors he experienced and witnessed but his artworks spoke for him.

Kalman was a gifted portrait artist drawing wonderful likenesses from the age of three.

In 2013 Susan Beilby Magee wrote a book called Into The Light: The Healing Art Of Kalman Aron, which chronicles his story and the therapeutic role of art-making in his life. She met Aron as a child when she sat for a portrait. His most profound piece “Mother and Child”painted in 1951 in pastel on old maps glued together on board.  He could not part with it.  Mothers and their children clinging so closely together. Click on the image of the book to learn more.

 

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