Experiences of Displacement: A study of the Irene Luftig Collection at the Jewish Museum of São Paulo

Abstract

This article examines the trajectory and artistic production of Irene Luftig (1907–1987), an artist of Jewish descent, born in Germany and settled in São Paulo after 1936. Based on the collection preserved at the Jewish Museum of São Paulo — comprising drawings, woodcuts, paintings, and collages — the study proposes an interpretation that articulates artistic practice, biography, and the historical experience of exile. Given the scarcity of biographical records, the research approaches Luftig’s oeuvre as a primary source for understanding a life marked by displacement and resettlement in Brazil. The article identifies three main poetic nuclei in her work: aging and elderly coexistence, explored primarily in intimate drawings; the construction of the urban landscape and labor, addressed in woodcuts produced between the 1960s and 1970s; and images of social suffering, violence, and denunciation, developed especially in her color woodcuts and collages. The article highlights the critical, socially engaged, and singular character of her work, understood as an indirect yet powerful testimony to the experience of a Jewish woman refugee and to her sensitivity toward suffering, anonymity, and exclusion.