Bedřich Fritta

Drawings from the Theresienstadt Ghetto

The exhibition shows works of the Czech-Jewish artist and caricaturist Bedřich Fritta produced in the Theresienstadt ghetto between 1942 and 1944. Deported to Theresienstadt on 4 December 1941, Fritta supervised the drawing studio of the Jüdische Selbstverwaltung (Jewish self-administration). Up to twenty detained artists worked there on assignments for the SS. They were forced to draw building plans, diagrams, and statistics which reinforced the desired image of the ghetto's smooth functioning. Secretly, the artists depicted daily reality in the ghetto. In October 1944, Fritta was deported to Auschwitz, where he died, soon after arriving, of the repercussions of an illness. The majority of his inofficial works, around one hundred sheets in total, survived in hiding and is now in the possession of the artist's son. The collection, large ink drawings as well as small sketches, will be on display for the first time in this scale.