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Simchat Torah by Jacob Bornfriend

Simchat Torah by Jacob Bornfriend

The portfolio of Jewish Festivals was based on studies for a mural commissioned from Bornfriend in 1957 for the library of Jews' College in London, which was designed by the University's first architect, Eugene Rosenberg. Bornfriend's paintings had been received with acclaim in London, they reflected a distinctive idiom in which his images, according to Pierre Rouve, (were) not illusionist reproductions of visible things but visual 'abstracts' of their innermost substance. This quality is apparent in the Jewish Festivals which present a poetic blending of image and cultural meaning.

The approach to printmaking adopted by Bornfriend incorporated drawing, painting and collage and used a combination of processes, including block printing, screen printing and lithography.