Oshman Family JCC

View an interpretive photo display of the life and work of Bernard Zakheim (1896-1985), one of the leading artists in California in the middle decades of the 20th century.

Born and raised in a Hasidic family in Warsaw, Poland, Zakheim immigrated to San Francisco in 1921. An associate of Diego Rivera, he won fame primarily as a muralist. Except for lengthy periods of study in Paris and Mexico City, he resided in the Bay Area until his death.

In 1934, he oversaw the entire Coit Tower mural program, the largest publicly funded art program in the country, and his own work, Library, ignited much controversy because it starkly reflected the class conflict during the Depression. At the end of the 1930s, he painted the monumental 12-panel fresco, The Story of California Medicine, which hangs in the amphitheater of Toland Hall on the campus of the UCSF Medical Center.

“My father’s work speaks to humanity; it speaks of humanity,” said Nathan Zakheim. “As a diarist, he recorded the Holocaust in vivid paintings from afar. He recorded the horror of man’s inhumanity to man, but then, from the depths of personal pain, the pain of losing his whole extended family in the Warsaw Ghetto, he emerged with lush green grasses, and scorched dead trees blooming with fresh red flowers. From those dark days onward, his art brimmed over with golden waves of the resurgence of life, of darkness giving way to light. In today’s troubled world, his work has taken on a new light.”

Reproductions of Zakheim’s main works may be viewed at www.bernardzakheim.com.