Samuel Bak

The Observers / Die Beobachter

1973
Oil on linen
51 ¹⁄₈ × 38 ¹⁄₄ inches(130 × 97 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: BAK 73
Make no mistake, this large early painting by Bak is about execution. The hoses used to carry lethal gas are prominent in the foreground to inform us of this. The population consists of people, wooden or metal representations of people and chess pieces. All these individuals face forward and look out at us. Two men with shaved heads and scruffy beards are held within a partially enclosed restrictive structure labeled with numbers while a single face appears in a partially opened window behind them. Is this a gas chamber?

To the right of the structure is a dense collection of various people images, including two still wearing hats. Bak’s father, who was murdered in the Ponary forest by invading Germans in 1944, often wore a hat and he is frequently represented in paintings by this simple device. Is this crowded group awaiting death in a gas chamber?

The foreground of the painting is filled with multi-colored chess pieces, almost all of which are pawns. One large pawn is directly attached to a hose while six others stand deep in a confining segmented container with two hoses emptying into it. Pawns, with round tops like the heads of the people, are the vulnerable early victims of any conflict on a chessboard but for those innocent humans murdered in the holocaust, it was no game.

So, who are The Observers? Can future victims see their eventual fate? What can be observed through a small window or even in plain sight? Most importantly, this painting was created for us, the later generations of non-participants, to see, to witness, to “observe” and hopefully never forget the atrocities perpetrated during Bak’s holocaust. Unfortunately, this senseless destruction of innocent human lives persists as more and more bodies are exhumed in the Ukraine. Can we learn? Can we change?

Bernard H. Pucker, BAK a Day, September 17, 2022
Themes: Chess, Figure

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Samuel Bak

The Observers / Die Beobachter

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