Silent Jerusalem of Lithuania – a star which stopped shining. The Return to Vilnius series

The first drawing by Bak produced in New York from the Return to Vilnius series (dedicated to the Vilna Ghetto). This is the ghetto in the time of the artist’s childhood surrounded by tall buildings with silent, covered windows, whereas the area of the ghetto is squeezed into narrow courtyards which have acquired the shape of the Star of David. The theme of an old, abandoned, tacit and empty city often repeats in Bak’s works. This is the destroyed Northern Jerusalem, a city from which Jews who lived here were expelled. “One historian once compared the non-existent Jewish Vilnius to a shining star, which died in the course of time. My city today lives in countless reflections of the star – in prose, poetry, music and art. These reflections are bleak yet sufficiently strong to inspire me to create” (Samuel Bak).