Nina Talbot

Art

Places in Galicia

Nina Talbot’s new series of oil paintings refers to Jewish life in the former historical Galicia, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which today is part of Poland and Western Ukraine.

The images in these paintings present Galician places, its people and events, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, highlighting memory and commemoration in connection with Jews in Galicia. The paintings evoke memory of the Jewish communities that flourished in this part of the world and its tragic destruction at the hands of the Nazis and the war.

Talbot’s maternal family was from Dynów and paternal family from areas around L’viv (Lwów, Lemberg) including Kamyanka Buzka (Kamionka Strumiłowa), Seredpil’tsi (Śródopolce, Radekhiv (Radziechów), Brody, Horodok (Grodek), Chortkiv (Czortków), Skole, Sukhostav (Suchostaw)and Vovchuky (Wołczuchy).

“Those who perished by Nazi bullets do not have graves–their remains are huddled together beneath mounds of earth, unknown souls except to those who live in the memory of their descendants.

“The heart mourns the thought of facing the loss of existence and memory bringing a future of forgetting the Jewish communities in the former historical Galicia. It is an obligation to save the embers of the burning fires, which flickered and destroyed a place where Jewish families found rest and settled. It has taken [me five] years to collect crumbs and shards of the history of our villages–its life, its sorrow. But of all of this we’ve got a few drops.”

– Excerpt from The Dinov Yizkor Book, 1979, Tel Aviv