Theatrical Realism: The Art of Inez Storer
 The National Museum of American
Jewish History is presenting
a retrospective of the accomplished California painter and printmaker,
Inez Storer.
Storer’s
work is known for its
autobiographical themes and personal narratives. Born in Santa Monica,
CA, to parents who had emigrated from Europe, Ms. Storer’s Jewish
mother was a dancer and actress and her Catholic father 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.
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