HENRY SIMON, DE L’OMBRE A LA LUMIERE

This marked the beginning of the darkest period of his life. After a long journey that took him to Hohenstein in East Prussia (Poland), he was incarcerated in a camp, Stalag 1B. He spent over a year there. All the artists were grouped together in the same barracks and allowed to draw and paint. To overcome the boredom and idleness imposed on them, Henry Simon threw himself into intense production, with the aim of bearing witness, resisting and hoping.

With limited means, he produced, like a reporter, drawings and watercolours that bore witness to the life of the prisoners, their difficult conditions and their physical and moral suffering. Drawing and painting was a way of resisting the enemy, sometimes even with a touch of derision, but it was also a way of hoping.

Henry Simon left us a unique gallery of extraordinarily powerful works, using a variety of techniques: drawings in graphite or ink, washes and watercolours. Captivity never altered his creativity; one might even say that it nourished it. His faith helped him to project himself towards the freedom he eventually regained.

He had to turn the page, rebuild himself when the Allies won the war, and rediscover the light that would flood his works a few years later.

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