# Mark Podwal

Mark Howard Podwal (June 8, 1945 – September 13, 2024) was an American artist, author, filmmaker and physician. He may have been best known initially for his drawings on The New York Times Op-Ed page. In addition, he is the author and illustrator of numerous books. Most of these works—Podwal's own as well as those he has illustrated for others—typically focus on Jewish legend, history and tradition. His art is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Israel Museum, the National Gallery of Prague, the Jewish Museums in Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Prague, New York, among many other venues.

## Background

Podwal was born in Brooklyn in 1945, and was raised in Flushing, Queens. His mother immigrated to the United States from Poland. One of his uncles was refused entry to the United States due to a misdiagnosed illness, and was later killed in the Holocaust.
Podwal attended Queens College and the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, and became a dermatologist. He drew as a hobby throughout his early years, before beginning to publish in 1971.

## Projects and Installations

Beyond his works on paper, Podwal's artistry has been employed in an array of diverse projects, including the design of a series of decorative plates for the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Passover Plate, Zodiac Platter (Met Bestseller), and Life Cycle (Met Bestseller). His work has been animated for public television in A Passover Seder with Elie Wiesel (Time Warner), engraved on a Congressional Gold Medal presented by President Reagan to Elie Wiesel, and woven into an Aubusson tapestry that adorned the ark in the main sanctuary of Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York. Moreover, he designed sixteen kiln cast glass panels for the United Jewish Appeal Federation Headquarters in New York. Podwal collaborated with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Allan Miller on the documentary House of Life: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, narrated by Claire Bloom. In 2009 and 2010, the film was broadcast on PBS.
In conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League, Podwal began The Jerusalem Sky Project, a program that fosters tolerance and awareness by bringing together young children from the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian communities. Participating religious schools study Podwal's Jerusalem Sky in their classrooms, and then encourage their students to illustrate their own depictions of Jerusalem. Amidst the learning, the children of each school write to or meet with their counterparts at a school of another faith and begin to learn about each other's religion and culture. After a few weeks, the program culminates with an exhibition of all of the drawings from each of the schools. At the opening of the exhibition, the children meet to enjoy each other's art and company. In a 2005 article called "Three Faiths, One Lesson", the New York Times covered the completion of the program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, NY. The project has since also been carried out in Los Angeles, CA, and Binghamton, NY. Regarding Jerusalem Sky, renowned children's author Maurice Sendak wrote, "All the earned and admiring praise – wondrous, luminous, magical – cannot catch the fierce bite, healthy spirit, and sheer joyousness of this superb book."
In 2011, Podwal received commissions to illustrate a new Passover Haggadah for the Central Conference of American Rabbis Press; to design new embroidered textiles for Prague's 700-year-old Altneuschul; to create a limited edition print for the Metropolitan Opera's production of Nabucco; and to design Hanukkah cards for the Metropolitan Museum and the Metropolitan Opera.
In 2014, the Terezin Ghetto Museum exhibited Podwal's cycle All This Has Come Upon Us, a series of 42 paintings and drawings created especially for that venue. The works, which span Jewish history from the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem, through the history of anti-Semitism and persecution in Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, have been described by the artist as offering "a disturbing reminder of how Europe’s extensive history of 'Jew-hatred' laid the groundwork for Terezin and Auschwitz". The series has been published as a portfolio of archival pigment prints, which has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Library of Congress, Yad Vashem, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University Library, Columbia University, Hebrew University, and the National Library of Israel, among many others.
In 2015, Mark Podwal was commissioned to design new textiles for the restored synagogue in the Czech city of Brno. At Prague's Klementinum, Podwal's series Mozart and Prague was exhibited along with Mozart's handwritten manuscripts.
In 2016, Glitterati Inc. published a 374-page monograph on his work, Reimagined: 45 Years of Jewish Art. Podwal's recent publications include his illustrations for Elie Wiesel's The Tale of a Niggun and Heinrich Heine's poems Hebrew Melodies, and his own A Collage of Customs and A Jewish Bestiary. Published in collaboration with the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the killings, An Atlas of Jewish Space, includes 139 of Podwal's images with a text by Holocaust scholar Robert Jan van Pelt.

## Affiliations

Podwal was represented by Forum Gallery, New York and began exhibiting there in 1977. He continued to pursue a parallel career as a physician and served on the faculty of New York University Grossman School of Medicine as Adjunct Associate Professor of Dermatology.

## Personal life and death

In 1977, Podwal married Ayalah Siev-or. They had two children.
Podwal died of cancer at his home in Harrison, New York, on September 13, 2024, at the age of 79.

## Awards

1984: American Book Awards 1989: The Society of Newspaper Design Award 1993: Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la Republique Francaise 1996: Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la Republique Francaise 1998: National Jewish Book Award in the Children's Picture Book category for You Never Know: A Legend of the Lamed-vavniks. Text by Francine Prose 1999: Society of Illustrators Silver Medal 1999: Aesop Prize and Aesop Accolades American Folklore Society 2003: Doctor of Humane Letters Honoris Causa, Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA 2009: Smithsonian Notable Book for Children 2010: New York University Grossman School of Medicine Alumnus Award Medicine in the Humanities 2011: Foundation for Jewish Culture Achievement Award 2012: Victoria and Albert Museum Print of the Month 2019: Gratias Agit Award Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Czech Republic)

## Films

2009: HOUSE OF LIFE: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague (Produced by Mark Podwal and Allan Miller) 2013: My Synagogue is in Prague: Picturing Mark Podwal (Produced by Czech Television) 2015: ALL THIS HAS COME UPON US: Mark Podwal's Art for Terezin (Produced by Czech Television)

## Publications

BOOKS BY THE ARTIST 1971: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire. Introduction by Peter Fonda. New York: Darien House 1978: A Book of Hebrew Letters. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society 1982: Leonardo di Freud. Milan: Sperling and Kupfer Editori 1984: A Jewish Bestiary. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society 1994: The Book of Tens. New York: Greenwillow Books 1995: Golem: A Giant Made of Mud. New York: Greenwillow Books 1998: The Menorah Story. New York: Greenwillow Books 2003: A Sweet Year. New York: Random House 2005: Jerusalem Sky. New York: Random House 2007: Doctored Drawings. New York: Bellevue Literary Press 2009: Built by Angels. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2015: Jüdisches Bestiarium. Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich 2016: Reimagined: 45 Years of Jewish Art. New York: Glitterati, Inc. 2018: Kaddish for Dąbrowa Białostocka. Amherst: Yiddish Book Center 2021: A Collage of Customs: Iconic Jewish Woodcuts Revised for the Twenty-First Century. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press 2021: A Jewish Bestiary: Fabulous Creatures from Hebraic Legend and Lore. University Park: Penn State University Press
SELECTED ILLUSTRATED BOOKS 1972: Let My People Go: A Haggadah. Introduction by Theodore Bikel. Foreword by Abba Eban. New York: Macmillan 1972: The Book of Lamentations. New York: The National Council on Art in Jewish Life 1979: Klagsbrun, Francine. Voices of Wisdom. New York: Pantheon 1983: Schwartz, Howard. The Captive Soul of the Messiah. New York: Schocken Books 1985-1988: The Elie Wiesel Collection. Paris: The Bibliophile Library (Fourteen volumes) 1988: Wiesel, Elie. The Six Days of Destruction. Mahwah: Paulist Press 1993: Wiesel, Elie. A Passover Haggadah. New York: Simon and Schuster 1996: Klagsbrun, Francine. Jewish Days. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1996: Prose, Francine. Dybbuk: A Marriage Made in Heaven. New York: Greenwillow Books 1997: Prose, Francine. The Angel's Mistake: Stories of Chelm. New York: Greenwillow Books 1998: Prose, Francine. You Never Know: A Legend of the Lamed-vavniks. New York: Greenwillow Books 1998: Wiesel, Elie. Le Golem: Legende d’une legende. Paris: Bibliophane/Editions du Rocher 1999: Sobel, Ileene Smith. Moses and the Angels. Introduction by Elie Wiesel. New York: Delacorte Press 1999: Wiesel, Elie. King Solomon and His Magic Ring. New York: Greenwillow Books 2000: Prose, Francine. The Demons’ Mistake: A Story from Chelm. New York: Greenwillow Books 2007: Bloom, Harold. Fallen Angels. New Haven: Yale University Press 2012: Yoffie, Alan S. Sharing the Journey: The Haggadah for the Contemporary Family. New York: CCAR Press 2014: Mishkan T’filah for Youth. New York: CCAR Press 2014: Middleburgh, Charles and Goldstein, Andrew. A Jewish Book of Comfort. Norwich: Canterbury Press 2018: Mishkan HaNefesh for Youth. New York: CCAR Press 2019: Heine, Heinrich. Hebrew Melodies. University Park: Penn State University Press 2020: Elie Wiesel. The Tale of a Niggun. New York: Schocken Books 2021: Van Pelt, Robert Jan. How Beautiful Are Your Tents Jacob: An Atlas of Jewish Space. Zurich: Park Books
SOLO EXHIBITIONS CATALOGUES 1977: Observations. Berkeley: Judah L. Magnes Museum 1990: Ozick, Cynthia. Ink and Inkling: Mark Podwal Master of the True Line. South Hadley: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum 1997: Wiesel, Elie. Mark Podwal: Jewish Dreams. Prague: Jewish Museum 2006: Kabbalistics. New York: Forum Gallery 2012: Carlebach, Elisheva. Jewish Magic in the Art of Mark Podwal. Prague: Jewish Museum 2014: All this has come upon us. Terezin: Terezin Memorial 2020: Kaddish for Dąbrowa Białostocka. Terezin: Terezin Memorial