|
 |
The Art of Inez Storer March 14 through Labor Day
 was an aviator who refused Hermann Goering’s offer to help
establish
the Third Reich’s air force. After a whirlwind romance, the couple
married,
immigrated to Cuba, and then came to the United States. The details of
her
German-Jewish past were not revealed to her until she was an adult.
There
were hints and intimations about her mother’s Jewish background and,
after
acknowledging this fact when Ms. Storer was 14, her father made clear
it was
never to be discussed again.Ms. Storer never mentioned it again, and the ambiguity about her background haunted her as she raised a family of her own and launched her career. In 1999, Ms. Storer finally got her mother, who was then dying, to confirm her Jewish identity. Yet, Jewish symbolism had begun to crop up earlier in her work. “Histories,” painted in 1996, was “the first time I painted a menorah. It is very autobiographical,” she said. “I knew that I was Jewish, just not the details of who or what.” “I never felt comfortable with Catholicism,” Storer said, and much of her work reflects this lack of a clear identity. “In a way, I was trying to create my own history through the craft that I knew, working with collage and old letters and  photographs. My work was about trying to
uncover
secrets.” "For more than four decades, Storer has pursued her own uniquely personal and idiosyncratic style of figuration,” said Karen Kienzle, curator of exhibits and collections for the de Saisset Museum of Santa Clara University in California, which originated the exhibition and provided the first retrospective of her work. “Storer’s delightfully accessible works are rich in content, addressing universal themes of identity, spirituality, imagination, and history. The exhibition provides brilliant examples of her range and technical virtuosity and why she is so often referred to as ‘a painter’s painter’ by other artists.” Ms. Storer’s current work continues to reflect issues of identity. “It’s about borderless people who are shoved from one country to another, always leaving things behind. I felt like that as an American growing up in Santa Monica. I felt completely dispossessed.” Storer’s paintings often depict narratives that unfold against the illusion of a theatrical backdrop – a direct reference to her father, who was an art director for Paramount Studios in Hollywood. In a catalog essay about Ms. Storer’s works, Andrea Pappas, an historian of 20th century American art, writes, “Storer asks that we consider the way our received versions of the past shape who we are, both as individuals and as nations. She has experienced this lesson repeatedly in her life as a woman and as an artist.” Top: Allotment, 2000. Oil on canvas, 20 x 20". Collection of Victoria Schonfeld and Victor Friedman. Bottom: Histories, 1996. Oil and mixed media on panel. 48 x 36". Collection of the San Jose Museum of Art, Museum purchase with funds from the Collections Committee. Admission to the exhibition is $4 for adults; $3 children, students and senior adults. Members are admitted free. Ms. Storer is represented in Philadelphia by the Snyderman Gallery. Copyright 1998-2004 by the National Museum of American Jewish History |