Print retrospective

For more information, contact Susan Griffith, 216-368-1004 or sbg4@po.cwru.edu.

Posted 9-30-99

Gallery to feature print retrospective

A 50-year retrospective of work by Sid Chafetz, a printmaker from Columbus, will open at Case Western Reserve University's Mather Gallery in Thwing Center at 5 p.m. Friday, October 8 and continue through November 5. The exhibit, free and open to the public, will follow the artist's response to his life and events from the 1940s through the present in woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and drawings as he addresses the themes of family, culture, academe, and politics.

Included in the retrospective will be several lithographic prints from a series of works called Perpetrators, verbal and visual images of the men and women who carried out policies of the Third Reich that brought death to millions of Jews and others.

A solider in World War II, Chafetz says he wanted to document the murderous programs that Hitler instituted and put human faces to the cadre of businessmen, military personnel, and professionals who implemented these programs with such dire consequences.

Chafetz, a professor emeritus of art from Ohio State University, has exhibited his work since 1947 in major print exhibits in Ohio, the United States, and Europe. The Perpetrators series had major showings in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Hungary.

His professional training as an artist took place at the Rhode Island School of Design, L'Ecole des Beaux Arts at Fontainebleau, and the Academe Julian in Paris. He also studied with French painter Fernand Leger and the English printmaker and painter Stanley Hayter, who influenced such artists as Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Pablo Picasso at his Parisian studio.

Chafetz has earned recognition and numerous honors, including two Fulbright fellowships, purchases by the Library of Congress, the Tiffany Award, Ford Foundation grant, and others. He has participated in the United States Information Service's cooperating scholar program in West Berlin and visited schools, art museums, and artists in Holland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia.

Mather Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. weekdays. For information, call 216-368-2679.