Description

Abigail visited the memorial park near the former Czechoslovakian village of Lidice, which contains a memorial sculpture by Marie Uchytilová for the children of the village that forms the subject of her painting.

In 1942 Reinhard Heydrich, the Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, was assassinated by resistance fighters. In retaliation, the Germans razed the village of Lidice to the ground in a notorious example of revenge killing. All 192 men of the village were murdered, as well as 52 of the women. All surviving women and children were then deported to concentration camps, or if found suitable to be “Germanized”, were sent to the greater Reich. The Nazi’s then proudly proclaimed that the village of Lidice, it’s residents, and its very name, were forever blotted from memory. The official reason provided for this was that the villagers had helped the assassins, which was untrue.

This painting stood on the artist’s easel for a long time and was executed with Abigail’s’ deepest emotion, because she suffered so much on behalf of the children who innocently perished or were orphaned as a result of this catastrophe.

The composition of the work differs from the other paintings. Here, Abigail is carried by two owls, symbols of wisdom and intuitive knowledge, that sail down from on high towards the monument. She is touched by the light of the G-dhead, whose rays encircle the Keter, the Kabbalistic symbol of the Hidden of all Things. The lower earthly realm below the monument is inhabited by three female figures whose malevolence reverberates within the structure of the soil. Earth and cosmos unite into an emblem of horror.