oha 2010

Rita Rosani, the dome of the Great Synagogue of Rome, a Bayer Leverkusen aspirin container, a menorah, a house plant, a Star of David and a Bardolino wine bottle

Art: The drawing was begun summer 2009; completed 2010
Media: Ink, gouache, colored pencil
Size: framed 31 1/8 H x 23 1/8 W

Rosani was born in Trieste, 1920 and died in Monte Comum, 1944. Monte Cumum is in the northeast, in the region where Venice and Trieste are located. An elementary school teacher, she was  an anti-Fascist combatant and the only Italian woman to die in combat, fighting the Nazis and Fascists in Italy during WWII.
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I drew the portrait from a photo I first saw in Susan Zuccotti's book ‘The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, Survival’ (pub. by Basic Books, NY, 1987).

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I drew the dome of the Great synagogue on-site in Rome, 2010.

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The Bayer aspirin container belonged to the late Selma Waldman, a Seattle-based artist and social justice activist. See the Selma Waldman Legacy Project on Facebook.

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During WWII, the executives and staff of Bayer AG, the German corporation and manufacturer of Bayer aspirin were active participants in war crimes, crimes against humanity and atrocities at the Nazi mass murder-death camp Auschwitz, in Poland; and at the Mauthausen concentration-death camp, Austria. Bayer Leverkusen’s parent company, I.G. Farben, made widespread use of slave laborers at the Auschwitz Birkenau mass murder - death camp complex. (Primo Levi was a survivor of slave labor there)

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The Bardolino wine bottle had belonged to Ms. Waldman; the empty bottle was given to me by her son after she passed.