Exhibition: Albert Chasan Paints His Parents' Lives

Growing up in 1930s New York City, Albert Chasan would listen to his parents talk in Yiddish about their harsh childhoods in the Russian Empire. “My father’s stories always had a touch of humor to them,” recalled Albert. “As a youngster, he was a real cutup. My mother’s stories were less enjoyable—whenever you got onto that topic with her, it was always: “I don’t know how we lived through it.”

When Albert retired from the marketing communications firm he founded, “it hit me: I had to do something with the stories my parents told.” He took up painting and commemorated the formative years of his parents’ lives through a series of expressionistic, boldly hued acrylics. 

With an uncanny eye for a world he never knew, Albert has imagined the terror-etched faces of his mother, Ida, her siblings, and their mother as they hid from murderous Cossacks and foraged for food in the inhospitable forest. In his paintings of his father, Ben, we see the young mischief maker get into trouble with his rebbe and the police before fleeing to Argentina, then to the United States. As an artist, Albert created via pure instinct, channeling his parents’ lives of a century ago from “a place within me,” to bring their experiences to life.