Excerpt from Shtetl Stories and Melodies. Art Catalogue. The Rogatchi Foundation in cooperation with the Grigory Kanovich Public Library of Jonava, Lithuania. 2024. © 2024 –
Michael Rogatchi explains: “ A paradox is not an exception in Jewish thinking and in Jewish behaviour, but rather it is a normality of it. Why? Because of being repeatedly pushed into a corner, Jewish people always had an indisputable will to overcome the desperate situation and to live normally against all odds. We have this prerequisite for overcoming in our genes. And in our belief. Why are the Jewish musicians so incredible? So filigrane, so inventive, so soulful, and so brilliant? Because their ground is a feather, saying metaphorically. When a gentleness and finesse are perceived as a firmity and starting point, the result is Jewish music and Jewish musicians, incredible and unfathomable as they are. Why is the feather ( in my works) leaf-shaped? Because they are similar in shape, obviously, but also a leaf, as a feather, can carry on a solo, while being a part of a wholesomeness of either tree or its branch, or a wing or the whole bird, for that matter. One has to have a special perception of the world to feel a fragile leaf or feather as a solid ground, as we Jews do, due to our historical experience. Not to be afraid to stay on that ground firmly, not to be concerned how stable it is, but to forget about that fragility completely, being motivated and driven in life instead by a leaf or feather’s finesse and beauty, and to create in whatever one does accordingly, being inspired by it” ( Michael Rogatchi ©. Eight Circles of Love. 2024 – ).
Michael Rogatchi ©. Jewish Melody study. 2013.
Being enthusiastically perceived by both public and art experts, the work has become a visit card for many of Michael Rogatchi’s exhibitions, publications and art events world-wide.
The Jewish Melody series was invited for many exhibitions and events, including Tallinn, Jerusalem, London, Los -Angeles and New York.
Michael Rogatchi with his Jewish Melody work at the opening of his personal exhibition at the largest in the world Menorah JCC, Dnipro, Ukraine. © The Rogatchi Foundation Archive.
The title-work of the series has attracted such an interest that the Israel National Council for Arts and Culture was interested in having its own version of it, on which the artist who never produces exact copies or similar versions of any of his works, worked in 2015.
Michael Rogatchi ©. Jewish Melody II. Fly Me To the Moon. 2015. Permanent Art Collection. Israel National Council for Art and Culture. Jerusalem.
Michael Rogatchi with Chairman of Israel National Council of Arts and Culture Yigal Amedi, next to the artist’s Jerusalem. My Stones oil painting. The painting is at the Permanent Art Collection of the Municipality of Jerusalem, Israel. © The Rogatchi Foundation Archive.
As many fruitful creative ideas, the central image of Jewish Melody work has become an inspiration for the artist for his following works. One of them was a very dear for the artist tribute to a close friend and colleague, outstanding theatrical director Lev Dodin, with whom the Rogatchi family has been close friends and colleagues for decades. Before visiting their beloved friend in his Maly Drama Theatre of Europe for filming a documentary together, Michael has created the work specifically for Lev Dodin, and the world maestro of stage loved it instantly. Since receiving it by maestro Dodin, this other version of Michael’s Jewish Melody has had a central place at the master’s desk in his study ever since.
Michael Rogatchi with Lev Dodin. © The Rogatchi Foundation Archive.
The idea of special inter-connection between a Jewish musician as a symbolic figure for the phenomenon of a Jewish talent and inspiration, in the perception of the artist, and that leaf-feather as a gentle ground of their inner firmity and determination has been developed by the artist in some other ways of his other works, such as No Place for Wagner ( 2016), which is also symbolic and a statement-like. In the words of the artist, “No Place for Wagner is actually not that much about music. It is rather about people’s choices, it is about the wider context of our life, it is about right and wrong, and it is about principles. This very work was created for a dear friend, who, additionally to being a very deep rabbi, is a great musician, a talented person, and a man with stern principles. So it all came together in this work, No Place for Wagner” (Michael Rogatchi ©. Eight Circles of Love. 2024 – ).
The person who is mentioned by the artist in this connection is rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld, who was many years leading the Western Marble Arch Synagogue community in London, was a very close colleague and friend of the great late Lord Rabbi Sacks, and also is one of the co-founders and leaders of the unparalleled, world-known Shabbaton Choir. Rabbi Lionel is very happy to own that special Michael’s work, which he appreciates very highly, as he always emphasises.
Michael Rogatchi ©. No Place for Wagner. 2016. Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld collection.
Following the success and the interest caused by Michael Rogatchi’s Jewish Melody series, after several successful international exhibitions, the artist was proposed by the Israeli Ministry for Culture to create a series of large oil paintings developing the ideas he brought out in his Jewish Melody. The following series known as Zion Waltz, was the artist’s response to that good and timely proposal. Jewish Melody in oil was one of the first works created among those large oil paintings.
The destiny of that work reflects the importance of international cooperation and joint efforts of justice and humanity, especially pivotal at the moments when humanity and decency are under attack. Ten years after the creation of that special and meaningful work by Michael Rogatchi, The Rogatchi Foundation has decided to award with its traditional Culture for Humanity Award Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Fight against anti-Semitism and fostering Jewish Life Dr Felix Klein, who contributes a lot into the maintaining the justice, decency and humanity at the highest governmental level in Germany and beyond it. As it happened, Dr Felix Klein is also a well-known violinist, the founder of The Diplomatic String Quartet Berlin, a very special musical ensemble whose mission is to find, re-discover and perform the music of the persecuted Jewish composers ( especially those living and working in between 1890 and 1950). Michael Rogatchi’s Jewish Melody oil painting ( 2014) has become an artistic prize of the Award.
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© The Rogatchi Foundation, 2024- Excerpt from Visualising Memory. Shtetl Stories and Melodies Art Catalogue. Vilnius. 2024.
