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Alicia Painting Analysis

Decent Essays

The painting’s composition features a blue female figure, as the focal point, in front of a field of wheat stalks under a dark sky. To begin with, the figure portrays Alicia when she stayed in the Polish village Wujciechovka and found work in different fields. During that time, Alicia dressed “with [her] hair braided and bandanna” to look like “a typical peasant girl, Polish or Ukrainian,” to prevent being identified as a Jew (Appleman-Jurman 139). The bandanna on the figure is painted red, the primary color of the Soviet Union’s flag, revealing Alicia’s desire for Russian liberation of the village she hid in. Furthermore, during the day, Alicia’s mother would hide in the wheat field, like the one depicted in the background, because she was too weak to work. She would “part the tall and delicate stalks gently before passing through,” concealing her presence (Appleman-Jurman 138). Her success in hiding is reflected in the painting because the hill does not look like there are humans on it. Despite the danger that Alicia and her mother …show more content…

First, to conserve materials, this painting representing Alicia Appleman-Jurman was painted over another painting that was completed last year. Similarly, Alicia was forced to make the most of the items available her because it was difficult for her, as a Jew, to have access to new food and supplies. To illustrate, a group of boys from Alicia’s hometown would take “branches left over from cut-down trees” to sell as firewood (Appleman-Jurman 46). Jewish families in ghettos had scarce means of making money legally; the boys scavenged the forest for thin twigs to sell at the market. Second, the yellow hill in the background of the painting was painted over with a dark blue wash. The bright yellow of the hill symbolizes the protection the hill gave Alicia’s mother, but Alicia and her mother were constantly fearful of the danger of being caught, represented by the dark

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