artists
Salomon Garf (Amsterdam, 1879 - Auschwitz, 1943)
Salomon Garf was educated at the Quellinus School
and the state training institute for art teachers (Rijksacademie) in
Amsterdam. In the evenings he attended classes in drawing and
painting at the National Academy of Art, where he competed
(unsuccessfully) for the famous Prix de Rome in 1904.
That same year he settled in the artists' village of Laren. In 1907
he married Eva Cosette Baszinger, and a son was born to the couple.
Both wife and child frequently sat for his paintings.
In Laren, Garf focused primarily on painting farming life. Later on,
portraits, nudes, still lives and interiors also came to occupy an
important place in his oeuvre.
After 1914 Garf lived and worked for years as a respected artist in
the southern district of Amsterdam. Garf belonged to the art society
Arti et Amicitiae and sat on its executive committee. The demand for
his work flagged during the Depression, and once the German forces
occupied the country they made it impossible for him to work at all.
In August 1943 he was seized from his home, deported, and murdered
in Auschwitz. His studio on Koninginneweg was plundered. The
collection of the Jewish Historical Museum contains 18 works by
Salomon Garf.
In September 2005, the JHM purchased a sketchbook belonging to
Salomon Garf and four of his drawings, with the financial support of
the BankGiro Lottery. The separate pencil drawings are all
portraits: two are self-portraits, dating from 1910 and 1914, and
one (from 1908) depicts a girl. The subject of the fourth portrait
has not yet been established. The sketchbook contains six drawings,
including a street with market stalls in the Jewish quarter and a
view of Jonas Daniël Meijerplein with the synagogue complex and the
Moses and Aaron Church.
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