Drawings On Jewish Cultural Legacy
Jewish Melody series was created by Michael in 2013 upon the invitation to participate with exhibiting the series in the official program of the events of the IV World Litvak Forum in Vilnius, Lithuania, in the Autumn 2013. The Forum – and the exhibition – were dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilna Ghetto. Michael Rogatchi was the only artist who held a personal exhibition in the wide program of the events. The exhibition held at the Vilnius Public Jewish Library, the first institution of the kind opened in Lithuania after the end of the Second World War, have had such success and caused such an interest that the organisers asked Michael to prolong the exhibition for extra six months.
For Michael, to create the special series dedicated to memory of Lithuanian Jewry, was a personal call. He dedicated the series to the memory of his family, his maternal grandmother Sofia Litowska, and to the other part of the family who were Litvaks, as well as to the memory of Michael’s wife Inna Bujanover-Rogatchi family, including Pinsky and Chigrinsky families who were Litvaks as well.
Despite very tragic events that were commemorated on the 70th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilna Ghetto in Vilnius in 2013, Michael’s intention and purpose in creation a special series he called Jewish Melody was to remember, by his art and images created, the warmest, most lyrical, most melodic parts of their lives thus insisting on our humanity and love which is indestructible, not by the Nazis, nor by anyone else. Creating Jewish Melody, Michael wanted as if to sing about love and kindness as the main element of Jewish character and the essential motto of Jewish family. He succeeded in creating some very memorable metaphors for such kindness and love in his Jewish Melody. The series has become highly critically acclaimed, and was very successfully exhibited internationally. After a huge success in Vilnius, Jewish Melody was invited as a special exhibition to commemorate the series of events and dates in the splendid New Tallinn Synagogue in Estonia in 2015, and in a month-long exhibition in Rome in 2016-2017. The series is invited for many exhibitions world-wide, including London, UK and the USA.
Jewish Melody was co-curated by Inna Rogatchi and Zilvinas Beliauskaus.
Jewish Melody is presented in musical video-essay – please consult Video Presentations page on this site.
The one of the works of this series has been re-created by the artist in a bigger size for late Leonard Cohen whom Michael and Inna Rogatchi were privileged to know and who did like Michael’s art a lot. The work now belong to Leonard Cohen’s family.
Many other works from this series belong to leading institutions and notable private collection world-wide, including the USA, France, Luxembourg, the UK, Finland and Israel.
The series are executed in special technique elaborated by Michael Rogatchi: combination of drawing in Indian Ink with colouring and volume-adding by a special mixture of oil pastels. In this technique, the artist works exclusively on special Italian hand-made cotton paper with a distinct structure.
The works of this series are widely reproduced.
