Artist, author, and Holocaust survivor, Lola Lieber, has packed several lives into one lifetime. Her story spans continents, generations, and an array of emotions.
Lola Lieber’s second-story Boro Park apartment is a little jewel of a place crowded with the antique furniture chandeliers paintings and knickknacks that she did her best to squeeze in when she moved from a house in Flatbush. Lola herself has an aristocratic look and self-possessed presence. Not very tall she’s attired in a style of Hungarian elegance common to Boro Park: blonde bouffant wig well-tailored dress bold jewelry.
Lola welcomes me warmly introducing me to her son Heshy and daughter-in-law Pesi. Lola wants to brag about them — both are active in helping revive Yiddishkeit in Poland. Heshy however wants to brag about his mother.
“My mother’s done some very well-known paintings!” he says. “Some of them hang in Yad Vashem. Others are in museums.”
I’d perused Lola’s art on her website and was struck by the vastly different styles she’s able to execute: Old Master-style still lifes; modern geometric cityscapes; pastel gardens; grim Holocaust scenes in a simple almost folk-art style. “Most painters stick to one genre ” I commented. “How do you move so easily from one style to another?”
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