Artist Soshana - Quiet and Mysteriuos
by Ann Capper, USA: "Gazette" October, 18th, 1969
It’s all an illusion.
What?
“The world and what we think we are,” says Soshana, whose paintings are now at Galerie Moos, on Sherbrooke St.
Soshana travels the world searching for meaning. The sketches for this exhibit come from Siberia, Mongolia, Tunisia, Laos, Thailand, India, Nepal, Afghanistan and Israel.
Quiet and mysterious, Soshana lets her canvases tell their own story. “I express everything through my paintings. When you look at them you can see what I want to say.”
Soshana’s message in oil has been shown across the world in Peking, Zurich, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Mexico, Paris and London.
Her paintings are found in private collections of noted people of our time, including the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Adlai Stevenson and Peggy Guggenheim.
But international attention has not clouded Soshana’s vision. The artist, who enjoys the meditative peace of the Indian Ashrams, has an uncanny insight into the more desperate aspects of humanity.
One example is the visual shock of “Street in New York.” In it, ghostly faces peer from dark skyscrapers at a lonely, thin figure in the street.
Desertion is in many of Soshana’s paintings. “There is a great lack in the world of love and affection,” she says.
Frightening loneliness is again a theme in “Alone in Sinai.” Real faces and figures crowd the desert in the memory of the bent figure wandering on the sand.
Soshana, who does all her painting from memory, says, “I actually see these faces in nature.”
The artist uses a surrealistic style which can be described as a personal, emotional expression affirming another world more real than the normal world.
The surrealist approach is most clearly evident in a painting titled “Mexico.” A mirage of animals and men sift through the space of the desert. After close study it’s hard to tell which faces are real and which are imaginary.
Perhaps it is all illusion, as Soshana says.
There are also Soshana’s impressionist paintings at Galerie Moos.
“Tiberias” captures the deep blue and purple mood of the sea in Israel. But it isn’t calm, it moves deeply, suggesting forces more powerful than us.
Another impressionist piece is the portrait of the artist Adolphe Gottlieb. Soshana’s anger with her subject comes out in the black brush strokes which form the features of the distorted face.
The Far East has had a great effect on the style of Soshana. One of the more oriental paintings is “Flying Fish” with its musical arabesques in yellow, green and white against a background of deep blue.
Whether the Far East or Mexico, Soshana’s paintings carry a message of truth, of the certain world.