The Bell, by Heinz Geiringer
Suggested Teaching Instructions
Paintings are a way that the artist communicates with his audience, the viewers. However, paintings are also personal documents. They are validations of the artist’s very existence and a deep record of the workings of his mind. If the painter’s work had never been discovered after his death, what meaning do you think the paintings have for the artist? How might they have been important to him while he was alive and making them? On the other hand, how would the viewer assess the significance of the paintings if the artist’s story was never known? Each of these paintings can be understood by the viewer in various ways. Most works of art are open for interpretation allowing for our imagination to create and to discover the meaning within. The beauty of these works is that they are both symbolic and mysterious at the same time.
Living in hiding was immense strain for Heinz and his father; Their host provided them with paints and canvases to help them pass the time and to cope with the unbearable tensions and stress from being in hiding. These are a few of the paintings which Heinz created between 1942-1944.