• Acclaimed artist Daniela Passal left a rich artistic legacy in both the United States and Israel. She was born to a Jewish family named Fessel in Krosno, Poland; a place where Jews had lived for centuries. She and her older brother Wolf had a loving, comfortable and happy early childhood in a large extended family. Then, in 1939, when she was seven and he twelve, all that ended. The Germans invaded and her life took a series of tragic and incredible turns. Her father, Itzak Fessel, was soon killed trying to escape into the Russian zone. For a while, the rest of the family struggled on as best they could as more and more Jews escaping other places poured into Krosno. But on August 10, 1942 when all Jews were ordered to report to the train station ready to leave, Daniela's mother Zipora Feiga Fessel, did not. In a breathtaking feat of courage and chutzpah, she took her two children and walked away, brazenly pretending to be the displaced wife of a Polish officer. They went to a town where no one knew them and found work. At birth Daniela had been named Sheindel but now her mother protected her children by assuming the Polish name "Grochowiak" and changing her daughter’s first name to Danuta. Hiding, almost in plain sight, these three Fessels survived the war.

• After the war it was still very dangerous for Jews in Poland. It was also difficult to find a place to go, so it was hard to leave. Wolf found an opportunity to go to England and young Daniela, still "Danuta Grochowiak”, and her mother lived in Breslau where she attended the School of Plastic Arts. The establishment of Israel changed all that and in 1950 the two women emigrated to Israel, taking the names Daniela and Felicia Passal. In this new homeland, Daniela studied at the Bezalel School of Art under Max Ardon, a former Bauhaus student of Klee and Kandinsky. There she won the prestigious Herman Struck prize, apparently for printmaking. Eventually, she went to work as a commercial artist and illustrator.

• In 1958 Daniela won a scholarship to study in New York at the Art Students League. There she lived at the International House and plunged into the excitement of the New York art world, painting seriously. Shortly after her arrival, she met another Holocaust survivor, Dr. Elias Gechman. In 1961 they married. They lived happily in New York, with a weekend home in Woodstock, for the next decade. Shortly before Elias's death in 1973, they also acquired a home in Israel, near Jerusalem in the village of Ein Kerem, which they called El-Dan. Daniela worked and showed steadily, exhibiting her large, abstract paintings at galleries in the U.S., Canada, and Israel, to rising acclaim. 

• The loss of Elias left her wandering back and forth to Israel and New York. She did some theatre work in both countries, designing stage sets and costumes but showed her paintings somewhat less. In 1983 she remarried, to an old friend of her youth in Israel. Her new husband, a widower with two teenaged children, lived in Belgium. Daniela settled in Brussels, learned French, and showed her paintings. Happiness did not last however, and in a few years the marriage was over and she returned to New York and resumed her wandering life and became a member of the International House's World Congress, attending their yearly meetings all over the world.

• Her house, El Dan, and the village of Ein Kerem captured her imagination: the old world of farming and poverty was fast slipping away to be replaced with, today, a decidedly prosperous and increasingly suburban atmosphere. She began photographing scenes of village life and making drawings and paintings which culminated in a book, "Images of Ein Kerem, the Elsewhere in Jerusalem" which she wrote and published in 1987.

• In that year Daniela also lost her mother, the brave Felicia, who, in her son's words, had "held her children's lives in her bare hands". She had never remarried but had lived to have the happiness and satisfaction of seeing her son, once Wolf Fessel, then William, but now Julian Passal, come to Israel too, marry Ziona, a sabra (a native Israeli), and became the father of Avital and Sigal. Today, in 2007, Sigal is herself the mother of three children while Avital recently had his first child. Each of these lives is a response to those who would have slaughtered their grandparents and great-grandparents. Sadly, Daniela never had children. Julian recounted the family's story in a filmed testimony for Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust memorial. This spare and moving tribute to a woman of valour and to his own youthful courage is still written on his face. Sometime before she died Felicia wrote a memoir, "In Quest of Life" portraying her early life in Poland and the war years. Daniela illustrated and published it.

• At El-Dan Daniela created a "Forum for Multi-Cultural Creativity" with all sorts of programs such as music, theatre or poetry readings, often in the garden which had exceptional acoustics thanks to the stone walls and the valley. She tried to expand this to include the entire town but the intifada prevented it. Perhaps it is just as well; organizing it would have pulled her even more from her art.  In 1989, when communist rule in Poland was overthrown, Daniela added a new element to her wanderings and began visiting there regularly joining the vigorous Polish art scene. She invited Polish artists to participate in the Forum by using a studio at El-Dan. She showed her own paintings and monoprints several times in Warsaw. 

• In her last years Daniela turned her attention back to printmaking, particularly monoprints, which are made fast and bear little room for second thoughts; a medium which suited her high energy and impulsive nature. Some think these were her finest works. Energy flows through them, vividly portraying a person who was, above all, an artist.

• On May 12, 2005 Daniela died in Israel. In her last wishes she asked that El-Dan remain a place where artists could work, a place free from bigotry, a place for all. The Jerusalem Foundation is preparing to turn it into an "incubator" for young and emerging artists, providing them with space to work and assistance in learning the practical side of being an artist. It is hoped that Ein-Kerem and all Jerusalem will be known as that place: for artists, people as creative and vibrant as Daniela Passal.

Daniela's Paintings

Daniela Passal

1932--2005

"A Lifetime of Art"

from the Mohonk Arts exhibit in High Falls, NY, July 2007

Numbers begin in the main gallery on right, continuing counter clockwise

1.        Untitled   Earlier yellow abstract: oil on canvas                            $ 36,000

2.         Small still life #1 abstracted: oil on board                                    $ 12,000

3.         Small still life #2 abstracted: oil on board                                    $ 12,000

4.         Small still life #3 abstracted: oil on board                                    $ 12,000

5.         Untitled Large abstract: oil on canvas                                         $ 36,000

On center island walls, clockwise

6.         Untitled mixed media on paper                                                  $ 15,200

7.         Untitled monoprint on paper                                                      $ 20,000

8.         Untitled abstract: oil on canvas                                                  $ 28,000

9.         "Girasoles"  Print on paper 1965                                               $ 15,200

Continuing counterclockwise on east wall

10.       "Red Forms" oil on canvas                                                        $ 28,000

11.       Untitled yellow abstract oil on canvas, c. 1969 on loan  NFS

12.       Untitled oil on canvas c. 1973                                                   $ 32,000         

On Stage, counter clockwise

13.       Untitled acrylic on canvas                                                           $ 32,000

14.       "Big Blue" acrylic on canvas, on loan                                               NFS

15.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 32,000

16.       Untitled acrylic on canvas, abstract                                             $ 28,000

17.       Untitled mixed media on paper                                                    $12,000

Numbers continue in the smaller gallery, on left, clockwise

18.       "Blue, bird" mixed media, on paper                                            $ 12,800

19.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 28,000

20.       Untitled  mixed media on paper, abstract                                    $ 13,000

21.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 32,000

22.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 28,000

23.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 28,000

24.       Small still life #4 abstracted: oil on board                                    $ 12,000

25.       Small still life #5 abstracted oil on board                                     $ 12,000

26.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 32,000

27.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 36,000

28.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 28,000

29.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 36,000

30.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 56,000

31.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, on loan                                                 NFS

32.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas                                                              NFS

33.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 36,000

34.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas                                                          $ 32,000

35.       Untitled                                                                                     $ 32,000                     

36.       "Stone Walls" Print on paper                                                      $ 11,200

37.       Untitled                                                                                     $ 16,000

38.       "Nude"                                                                                       $  9,600

39.       Untitled                                                                                      NFS

40.       Untitled   Monoprint     on loan                                                   NFS

Main Gallery, counter clockwise

41.       Untitled                                                                                    $  44,000

42.       "Sky, Presence and Time" acrylic on canvas, 1990's on loan            NFS

43.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 20,000

44.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 44,000

45.       "Angel on the Terrace" acrylic                                                      NFS

46.       Untitled  acrylic on canvas, abstract                                            $ 36,000

47.       Nude, rear view  acrylic on canvas, abstract                               $ 32,000

48.       Untitled  monoprint                                                                    $ 20,800

49.       Untitled                                                                                     $ 20,800

50.       Untitled                                                                                    $ 20,800

51.       Nude, pen and ink                                                                    $ 12,000

52.       Nude, pen and ink                    on loan                                       NFS

also, by door   "Abakus Gallery" poster  black and white                        NFS