By MARTY LEVINE
A new annual lecture on Jewish Studies and the arts has been endowed at Pitt by Edith Balas, an art historian and Holocaust survivor who died earlier this year.
Born in Cluj, Hungary (a town now in Romania), Balas earned her doctorate at Pitt, then joined Carnegie Mellon as professor of art history. Her scholarship focused on modern painting and sculpture, Italian Renaissance art, several Pittsburgh artists and the continuing influence of the Holocaust on artistic works. Balas also curated exhibitions locally and in New York, Paris and Budapest.
“The Dr. Edith Balas annual lecture will be a highlight of our event series,” said Rachel Kranson, director of Jewish Studies (who notes that it will be held in association with Carnegie Mellon’s Jack Buncher Endowed Chair of Jewish Studies). “As long as a topic can generate an interesting Jewish studies conversation, we want to bring that conversation to our University and our city. The study of Jews and the arts fits perfectly with how we approach the field.
“We certainly intend to invite scholars who study the artists who survived or depicted the horrors of the Holocaust, who uncover the work of artists whose careers were cut short because of the Holocaust, and who trace artwork stolen by Nazis,” Kranson added. But the lecture series will also “engage with Jewish religion, Jewish ideas, or other moments in Jewish history. With this endowment, we will be able to host events that explore a wide range of Jewish creativity.
Kranson had the chance to meet Balas shortly before her death and see some of her “powerful artwork,” she said. She has also studied her books and exhibits.
Balas’ late husband, Egon Balas, “told his own story of surviving the Holocaust to my ‘Holocaust History and Memory’ class’” in February 2019, she recalls. “Though he was older and rather frail at that point, he spoke to my class for two hours, without taking a break to look at notes or even to sip water. The talk was a tour de force, utterly riveting, terrifying, and powerfully told. Then, not even a month later, he passed away. It was as if he knew this was his final opportunity to share his story in public. Altogether, it was one of the most extraordinary experiences I ever had as an instructor.”
Associate Professor of English Jennifer Waldron, step-granddaughter of Edith Balas, can attest to her impact as well. “She was able to soar in this beautiful way” despite having been deported to concentration camps by the Nazis at age 14 — and later surviving many bouts with breast cancer. “She was just incredibly optimistic and just a beautiful, elegant person. Her home was this joyous place for family together. She was an incredibly positive presence in everyone’s lives.”
Balas titled her memoir, “Bird in Flight,” after the sculpture “Bird in Space” by Constantin Brancusi, whose work she had studied — she felt it was emblematic of her life. The book, Waldron says, does not dwell on her early life — an idyllic childhood followed by her imprisonment and near starvation, helped only by her mother and cousin who were held alongside her, and a camp cook who, in the last days before liberation, chose not to sell the prison’s last potatoes on the black market: “Each of them got five or six small potatoes, and that was the difference between life and death,” Waldron says.
In the United States, Balas’ art scholarship focused on the Italian Renaissance, resulting in two books on Michelangelo and one on the mother goddess in the art of that period. She also wrote about artists from her native Hungary, including Joseph Csaky, who incorporated the country’s folk traditions into his art — a connection she still felt as well.
She also wrote about painter Valentin Lustig, the son of Holocaust survivors from Cluj, whose paintings reflect the second-generation trauma in both a realist and magical realist manner — as in his painting depicting the town on a typical day, apart from one group of people crowded impossibly on a balcony, naked and with no door to let them back in.
Waldron will be among those having input on speakers and subjects for the Balas lecture. “At some point I would love to see the lecture series pick up on Edith’s work to support broader understanding and appreciation of artists whose work addresses the legacies of the Holocaust,” Waldron says.
“These lectures will attract a mix of students, faculty and community members,” Kranson says. “We feel very fortunate to host events each year that bring together people from both the University and the community to think about Jewish history, religion and creative expression.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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