Lot 396: Samuel Bak Exhibited Surrealist Painting, The Origins of the Endgame

Samuel Bak (United States/Israel/Poland, b. 1933) oil on canvas surrealist painting titled The Origins of the End Game, 1971. Oversized chess pieces and weathered wooden constructions sit on a rocky hillside beneath a dark, cloudy sky and before an expansive landscape. The shadow or silhouette of a horse’s head or knight chess piece appears prominently on a central wooden panel. Signed “BAK,” lower right. With Safrai Art Gallery, Jerusalem and Boston label affixed to stretcher plus inventory number inscribed to upper-right of stretcher. Housed in a distressed giltwood frame with linen fillet. Sight: 18″ H x 14 1/2″ W. Framed: 24″ H x 20 5/8″ W. Literature: Paul T. Nagano, SAMUEL BAK: THE ETERNAL ENIGMA (Boston, MA: Pucker/Safrai Gallery, Inc., 1971), front cover. Exhibition History: Samuel Bak: The Eternal Enigma; Pucker/Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA; Jan. 10-Oct. 11, 1971. Biographical Note: “Samuel Bak was born in 1933 in Vilna, Poland…Bak lived under Soviet and German occupation from 1940-44. Bak’s artistic talent was first recognized during an exhibition of his work in the Ghetto of Vilna when he was nine years old. While he and his mother were sheltered in a local convent, his father and four grandparents all perished at the hands of the Nazis…Bak studied art in Munich and later at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem after immigrating to the newly formed state of Israel with his mother in 1948…[Bak] has had numerous exhibitions in major museums, galleries, and universities throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States, including retrospectives at Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, and the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Bezalel National Museum in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and his work has been exhibited at Holocaust museums around the world. He has lived and worked in Tel Aviv, Paris, Rome, New York, and Lausanne. In 1993, he settled in Massachusetts and became an American citizen.” (Source: Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, University of Nebraska, Omaha)

PROVENANCE: Estate of Florence F. Johnston, Knoxville, TN. Pucker/Safrai Gallery, Jerusalem and Boston.

CONDITION: Overall very good condition. With negligible specks of liquid accretion visible under UV light to right of horsehead shadow, plus a single speck to left of rock at lower left. See UV photography. Slight looseness to canvas and faint stretcher marks visible in raking light. Frame with negligible abrasions and losses.