REVIEW OF MICHAEL ROGATCHI EXHIBITION IN LEADING MAGAZINE
MICHAEL ROGATCHI is a fighter against cynicism, and his paintings are providing the viewer with a clear and high moral stand.
One of Michael’s deeply impressive and touching works displays the endless grey column of people suffering from cold and humiliation. There is a trace of Michael’s own childhood in this painting entitled The Year 1953.
There are traces of his family’s and his people’s memory of the Holocaust tragedy in another, very emotional work: My Train – where you are as if getting inside that picture with an unspeakable magnitude of loving memory, following The Train with the many different faces that are falling apart on its’ last and awful journey.
There is also Michael’s new work on the wall. Its’ name is Unforgiving. The face of a Jewish man expresses a highly disturbing mixture of sorrow, dismay and alarm. Michael made this work in one day, as his immediate response to a shameful pogrom undertaken inside a Jewish cemetery in Turku where 173 grave-stones out of 300 situated there were recently vandalised ( pogrom took place in 1998).
We can see how the extremely dramatic lives of Michael Rogatchi and his family have been transformed into his impressive, strong and original paintings.
We can feel that the open fire which is still storming in his soul is producing extremely valuable and rare “products” for many other souls.
Leena Jarsta, Kotiliesi magazine, Finland.