Yosl Bergner 'Arrival, from The Kimberley Album' fantastical 'Prone Schoolgirl'

'Prone Schoolgirl'

Swaartbooisdrift

The heaviest of days give way to light again

orange dust and burnt stubble

Yosl Bergner 'Arrival, from The Kimberley Album' fantastical 'Prone Schoolgirl'The story behind this work is stranger than fiction. It begins in 1933 when Yiddish poet, playwright, essayist and activist Melech Ravitch (a pseudonym for Zekharye Khone Bergner) left Europe in search of a new home for Europes increasingly threatened Jewish population. He arrived in Australia with the fantasy that among the Kimberleys lied the Promised Land for his people. Decades later his son, the acclaimed artist Yosl Bergner, memorialised this