An Artist’s Eye

As a child, Huvy became adept at adjusting to new cities, new countries, new cultures. “That influenced her paintings,” Elisha explains. “In each place, she’d take in the architecture, the colors, the people, the Jewish sites, the quality of the light. It all gets drawn upon in each work.”

As I look around, I wonder if it also developed Huvy’s artistic eye. As artist Mary Lapos memorably wrote: “The ability to truly see, to look at this earth as a painting waiting to be born through our fingers, is what separates us artists from the rest of humanity.” To paint such arresting pictures requires both intimate knowledge of the subject as well as an eye that sees shapes and colors as if for the first time.

How did Huvy obtain this? How did a girl from Meah Shearim became an internationally acclaimed artist?

The street in which Huvy lives today is just a few minutes away from the home in which she lived as a child. Huvy opens the front door with a wide smile. Noticing a group of little girls waiting for their mother outside, she ushers all of us inside, and begins doling out orange juice and cookies. I can’t concentrate on food, though — my attention is caught by the huge oil paintings that dot the small room.

I wonder about the immense effort invested into each painting: not only the months of work, but the physical strain of working with large canvases at her advanced age. “When you love something, it’s not hard for you,” Huvy says. Her smile is warm, her voice low, her words free of pretension.

I peep into her “studio”— an old plastic chair covered by paint smudges, a stack of canvases propped against the wall, a large easel holds Huvy’s latest work-in-progress. It’s a home that reflects not a world-acclaimed painter, but the modest and warm woman that Huvy Elisha is. Huvy is quick to deflect compliments: “It’s not me,” she says. “All the praise, it doesn’t do anything to me.”

“So who are you?”

Huvy points to her paintings. Flowers, scenes from Tanach, a wedding procession, a hachnasas sefer Torah. “The world is so beautiful,” she says. “All of life is a miracle.”

Miraculous Beginnings

Miracles punctuated Huvy’s childhood, her son tells me. The first came at the start of the Blitz, when the British government made elaborate plans to evacuate thousands of children over the Atlantic to the shores of America. Huvy and her younger brother were included in the scheme. As her mother prepared suitcases filled with clothing, she got the children excited about their forthcoming adventure. They would be going on a ship! Across the ocean! And then they would arrive in America, land of the free!

The children squeezed onto the train, smiling and chattering, filled with excitement. The doors were closed. The guard blew his whistle.

And then, a moment before the train began to roll out of the station, a strange premonition gripped Huvy’s mother. She banged on the door of the train, yanked it open, and grabbed Huvy and her brother out of the carriage and back onto the platform.

Bitterly disappointed, Huvy and her brother wailed while the other children cheered as the train rolled out of the station, the first leg of a long journey.

A few days later, Huvy’s mother was walking to the grocer when she picked up a newspaper. The bold black letters on the front page hit her. Ship Torpedoed. The ship carrying all those child evacuees had been torpedoed by a German U-boat. There were no survivors.

There were other miracles, too, albeit in the guise of the mundane. After being evacuated to Cornwall, Huvy loved walking along the cliffs, basking in the special quality of the Cornwall sun, mirrored in the sea and the landscape. One Friday, as she walked, she came across wild artichokes. She gathered them up and continued on her walk, where she discovered a patch of wild strawberries. She ran home and told her mother, who spread the word. That Shabbos, the family feasted on artichokes and strawberries: rare treats in those hungry days of rationing.

And then there was the encouragement she was given by her headmistress, who herself dabbled in the arts. Recognizing Huvy’s precocious talent, the headmistress set aside a room in the school and bid Huvy to paint, just paint. Later, she was instrumental in encouraging Huvy to apply to the celebrated school of art, St. Martin’s School of Art and Design. At the age of 14, Huvy was the youngest student ever to have been accepted there.

One day, after her acceptance to Saint Martin’s School of Art, Huvi set to work on some writing assignments. She was sitting in the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum, working at one of their huge wooden desks. Suddenly, there was an air raid signal. Huvy recognized the ominous buzz of a bomb in the vicinity. She abandoned her papers and looked around for shelter. There was nothing nearby. The bomb buzzed closer. Huvy dived under the solid wooden desk and prayed.

With an almighty crash, the bomb fell. The entire building shook with the impact, and the six-foot windows that graced the museum crashed out of their frames. One of these huge windows landed directly on the desk where Huvy had been working — and under which she had taken shelter.

In St. Martin, Huvy studied realism, Impressionism, and post-Impressionism under masters of the forms. Her work encompasses all three styles, but a common thread runs through each painting. In the gallery, Menachem Elisha points out a still life of poppies in a vase. “Those flowers have been cut. Essentially, they’re dead, it should be a picture with undertones of melancholy, but it’s not. There’s a profusion of color. My mother took dead flowers and breathed life into them.”

You Like it? Take it

“We had a lovely childhood,” Elisha says, his voice carrying unmistakable warmth. No frustrated artist, her time swallowed by her children? “Not at all. Often, we were given paintbrushes and sat around the table painting together — not that we children had much talent. It bypassed us and found its place in the grandchildren. We all know how to work on a painting, but nothing to write home about.”

One aspect of his mother lodged itself in his memory. “My mother is a hugely generous person. People would come to the house and admire her work. She’d say, ‘You like it? You could buy it!’ ‘I’ve only got $50 on me,’ the visitor would say. ‘So give me that,’ my mother said, and she happily handed over a painting worth many times that amount.”

It was her down-to-earth warmth that made her pine for Jerusalem, throughout the Elishas’ stint in England. In 1968, Huvy’s husband, Eli, traveled to Jerusalem for business. Huvy was filled with sudden yearning for her homeland. She recalls: “I said, Eli, don’t move from there. I can’t stay in London. We’re moving to give the children a real chinuch. I was born there, and I’ll die there.”

Eli’s answer: “If that’s what you want…”

That very day, the Elishas bought tickets for a boat traveling to Eretz Yisrael.

“As soon as we arrived back in Jerusalem, someone was always knocking,” Elisha reminisces. One woman cradled a bowl of challah, offering Huvy the opportunity to make the brachah. Another woman wanted to ask about a recipe, yet another was seeking a handout. There were children and women chatting and an atmosphere of neighborliness.

By the time Huvy was in her 50s, her daily schedule went something like this: Wake up, daven Shacharis, read Me’am Loez (“the fuel that drives me,” Huvy explains). Then, she paints until the evening, when her children and grandchildren gather in her tiny house, ask her to take a break, eat something, rest a little. Huvy laughs when she reflects on her schedule, which, at age 90, hasn’t changed much over the years. “They tell me to stop, that I’m not a young woman any more. But it gives me strength.”

As word of her work spread and her output increased, her son Menachem established a gallery on King David Street. “From my father I had business smarts, and I knew I wanted my mother’s work to reach beyond the people who walked into her little house in Meah Shearim,” Elisha explains. From the gallery, Huvy’s work has found homes all over the world. From exclusive hotels to the residence of a diplomat in the Far East, from a small lounge in the Isle of Man to British royal residences, Huvy’s art is loved — and acclaimed — around the world.

There are some creations, however, that Huvy would never permit to be displayed; even her children have never set eyes upon them. Although Huvy and her family arrived in England before the flames of the Holocaust were lit, she was still deeply affected by its horrors. For a while, in an attempt to come to terms with the tragedy, she painted scenes from ghettos and concentration camps. “Through painting I came to a different level of understanding and identifying with survivors,” Huvy explains soberly. This was art not as an esthetic experience, but as history and testimony.

How has Huvy’s work changed over the years? I ask Elisha. “Today it’s more channeled to Jewish themes, although my mother still does incredible land and seascapes.”

Can he pinpoint anything that led to this change? “Forty years ago, around the age of 50, my mother became attracted to chassidus.” He pauses. “She’s a creative soul.” The influence of chassidus lends her work unmistakable vitality and joy.

Strokes of the Soul

One amazing aspect of Huvy’s paintings is how they appeal to people from all walks of life. On one level, this can be attributed to her style: the Impressionist and post-Impressionist techniques lend the works unseen layers of depth; the pictures resonate with everyone

For a while, there was a ten-foot tall painting of chassidim dancing, done in blue oil paint on canvas, hanging in the window of Huvy’s gallery. Today, the painting hangs in the Waldorf Astoria and its vibrant joy is admired by the many guests. Back when it was in the gallery, Elisha describes it as a magnet that drew all types. “I once arrived at the gallery to find three people standing outside, looking at this painting. A religious Jew, a non-religious Jew, and a Christian.

“I said to them, ‘I see you like this painting.’

“All three of them began to wax lyrical. The movement, the strength, the joy, the way it hits you like it’s alive, more than alive… I said to them, ‘Do you know that this was painted by a woman in her 80s?’

“‘Impossible,’ they declared, incredulous.”

A painting reflects the painter. To meet Huvy, sitting in her small apartment in Meah Shearim, channeling her intense love of life, her joy, her strength into the paintings is to be astounded, yes, but not surprised by the effects of her brush on canvas.

Elisha tells of how he was sitting in the gallery and he noticed an irreligious Israeli couple looking at a picture in the window. Elisha sports a long beard and a frock coat, not the usual image of a gallery curator, and when the couple spotted him, they took off — fast.

Elisha wouldn’t let them go so quickly. He walked outside and called after them, “Do you like the paintings?” The couple paused in their tracks. “Would you like to come in and see some more? I assure you that you’ll see things you’ve never seen before.”

The couple slowly walked towards him. “Just for a moment.”

Inside, Mr. Elisha slowly guided them through the gallery, explaining the different scenes: “Here’s a hachnasas sefer Torah. You see, the kids hold torches, there’s a parade.”

They paused. “Nice,” they said grudgingly.

They stopped for a long time in front a portrait of a rabbi. “This reminds me of Rembrandt,” one said.

“My mother counts Rembrandt as one of her influences.”

Elisha muses: “These people had no intention of coming in because I’m an orthodox Jew and they have no connection with people like me. They have prejudices. But by the time we’d finished in the gallery that day, we were the best of friends. They bought a small work and come back regularly.” He reflects: “My mother’s work has the ability to make a kiddush Hashem.”

Elisha grows excited as he gives another example. A couple entered the gallery, the man was Jewish and his wife German, obviously non-Jewish. Their son was blue eyed, blonde hair. They spent a long time looking around and eventually bought a huge painting depicting a scene of Jewish life. “After the purchase, he was so excited that we danced together, right here in the gallery,” Elisha recalls. “I think that painting did something to him, it gave him a connection to his Jewish soul.”

Years later, Elisha discovered that the man’s wife had converted and the family had moved to Israel. “Today they live a Jewish lifestyle here in Israel.”

Every viewer finds something in the paintings that express his own soul. One of the most extreme cases of this was a Dutch couple who wandered into the gallery one day. They stopped and stared at a post-Impressionist picture of the Baal Shem Tov, complete with many esoteric references. Huvy’s son engaged the man in conversation. “I see you like this painting.”

The man nodded, without taking his eyes off the painting.

“Do you know who this is?”

“Of course.”

Elisha was puzzled. Most Jews who entered the gallery couldn’t identify the subject of the scene, and this couple had a distinctly non-Jewish look about them.

“It’s the Baal Shem Tov,” the man said.

Seeing Elisha’s surprise, the man’s wife explained. “My husband is a priest. Every Sunday, he bases his sermon on some of the ideas of the Baal Shem Tov. Of course he appreciates this painting.”

There are more stories, surprising stories, of how people are touched profoundly by Huvy’s work. It’s more than flawless technique and composition. There’s joy in the pictures. There’s soul in each brushstroke.

—Ruti Kepler contributed to this feature

Huvy Elisha at a Glance

Born: 1927, Bukharian Quarter, Jerusalem

Travels: London, then evacuated to Devonshire and Cornwall before returning to London. In the 60s, Huvy and her family made aliyah, and after a stint in Herzliya Pituach, returned to Jerusalem.

Studied: St. Martin’s School of Art, London.

Praised for: Her generous spirit and joyful eye

Acclaimed as: One of the top ten Israeli artists today and as a leading Impressionist painter

Known for: Looking at a finished painting and saying, “I can’t believe I actually painted this.”

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 537)