Samuelio Bako gidas

MUSEUM OF Samuel BAK

Welcome to the Museum of Samuel Bak! We will now proceed on a symbolic wisdom-inspired journey through the extraordinary life of the artist.

“Ten miracles were necessary to spare my life.” (Samuel Bak)

Samuel Bak was born in 1933 in Vilnius. “My maternal grandmother was a real businesswoman, she imported oranges to Vilnius. I can see her in a room full of furniture with expensive upholstery and swan shaped glass lampshades shimmering with colours of the rainbow and my grandfather Chone was next to the exotic birds in cages and an enormous aquarium with tropical fish,” Bak remembered his childhood. He grew up in the affluent family: his father was a doctor and his maternal grandparents were traders. The world changed on 24 June 1941 when Nazi Germany occupied Vilnius. Bak and his family were moved into the Vilna Ghetto. He was lucky – his creative talent and yearning to learn allowed him to meet such prominent Yiddish poets as Avrom Sutzkever and Schmerke Kaczerginski. At the age of nine, Bak staged his first exhibition at the Vilna Ghetto. By the end of WWII, Samuel and his mother were the only members of his extensive family to survive. They were living in the Displaced Persons camp in Landsberg, Germany. Subsequently, the artist lived in Israel, Italy, France, and Switzerland before finally settling in the United States of America.

Texts by Ieva Šadzevičienė, Head of the Samuel Bak Museum

© Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish Museum

Citations from Samuel Bak, Painted in Words - A Memoir, Indiana University Press Pucker Art Publications. Boston, MA, USA, 2001.