Beyond Oct. 7’s anguish, 300-plus images of hope and beauty – The Forward

Roughly translated, the Hebrew word for postcard means revealed or uncovered. It’s a fitting definition for the Israeli artist Zeev Englemayer’s “Daily Postcard” project, which lays bare his emotional response to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack.

Since then, Englemayer has drawn more than 300 images — hostages learning yoga deep inside the airless tunnels of Gaza;  a portrait of the American-Israeli hostage Hersch Goldberg-Polin; Kfir Bibas blowing out candles on his first birthday cake; a flower seller near Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square. While the images evoke despair and isolation, longing and grief, the vibrant colors and childlike figures spark a measure of joy and beauty.

Now nearly 30 reproductions of Englemayer’s illustrations are on display in “Postcards of Hope,” at the Westchester Jewish Center’s Koslowe Gallery..

“I decided to center on hope at the beginning of the war. In the first two weeks, the drawings were more pessimistic. I didn’t even call them postcards and I painted only in black and white. Then I understood I had to find a different way of looking at it. I felt we needed comfort and hope,” Engelmayer said in a video conversation with the gallery’s curator Amy Levine-Kennedy, from his studio in Tel Aviv.

That sense of hope, or the possibility that something beautiful could be born of something so brutal, is palpable in “Nova’s flowers.” On display inside the gallery, the illustration shows eight Nova music festival attendees underground with Israel’s national flower, the anemone, in bloom above their heads.

The celebrated Israeli artist, illustrator and cartoonist began his project two weeks after Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s southern border and slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children and took 251 people hostage.

One of Englemayer’s first illustrations was “Nova Music festival,” a black-and-white illustration of entwined young people that evokes Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica.”

Two weeks later, he unboxed his magic markers and returned to the world of color with “Pastoral kibbutz,” a folk art-like illustration that depicts a kibbutz with red roofed houses, tangles of flowers, and a water tower. The caption for that image “Something horrible is about to happen,” infuses the otherwise happy picture with dread.

“We know what is going to happen, but the people don’t,” said Englemayer, who frequently referred to photos of Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Aza while drawing the piece.

Known for his irreverent, subversive political commentary before the war, particularly for his court jester like alter ego Shoshke, who often appears at political protests, Englemayer said the project has allowed him to confront the grief and confusion he’s felt since the attack, as well as connect with scores of Israelis.

As part of the show, Kennedy-Levine, who was the first American gallerist to contact Engelmayer, displayed the many requests Engelmayer has received from people asking for illustrations of their loved ones.

It takes Engelmayer between three and four hours to draw the postcards, using a combination of magic marker and acrylic. The end result is a piece that resides somewhere between traditional folk art and an illustration that could be found in a children’s book.

For example, visitors to the gallery will see Englemayer’s drawing of the three close friends Or, Nadav and Tal. Killed while fishing at Zikum beach, Englemayer pictured them sitting on a crescent moon, fishing for stars.

In “Eden will return to Tel Aviv,” he depicted a smiling Eden Yerushalmi zipping alongside the beach on her cherry-red moped, her curly brown hair flowing behind like a pennant.  It’s an especially poignant drawing Yerushalmi was one of six hostages Hamas executed on Sept. 1.

“He draws the things they wanted to do and wanted to be,” Levine-Kennedy said.

In “Midnight kiss on New Year’s Eve,” Englemayer imagines a woman embracing her partner who is being held hostage. It is believed Hamas is still holding about 96 people hostage.

“It’s very important to remind everyone they are still there,” he said. “They don’t have food; they are locked in very small places underground. We have to remember it all the time.”

The collection will be exhibited in the Koslowe Gallery until Jan. 21, 2025.