Exploring human nature
Jacob Landau's work at Monmouth University through June 22
BY LINDA DeNICOLA
Staff Writer

"Songs in the Night," lithograph

While not exactly a household name, Jacob Landau was a force for reason in the world. A resident of the community of Roosevelt artists, he is internationally known for his drawings, lithographs, limited-edition prints, watercolors and stained-glass designs.

Five years after his death, visitors to a major exhibition presented by Monmouth University, in partnership with the Jacob Landau Institute, will experience Landau's relentless exploration of all that it means to be human.

"I have a strong sense of how man's inhumanity to man has worked to create the kind of society we live in," the artist said in March 1999 at the time of his retrospective exhibit at the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia.

The exhibition, "Dialoguing with Humanity," spans Landau's life as an artist, teacher and mentor through a variety of his works.

Part of Monmouth University's Jewish Culture Festival, Landau's work will be on view June 3-22 in the 800 and Ice House galleries on the university's West Long Branch campus.

Color lithograph from the "Kingdom of Dreams"

According to university President Paul G. Gaffney II, "Dialoguing With Humanity" is the first exhibition of an arts/education collaboration forged between Monmouth University and the Jacob Landau Institute to preserve the Roosevelt artist's legacy and extend his educational philosophy to the people of Monmouth County and beyond.

"We all need exposure to art. That is becoming more difficult as public programs are cut back. And that is why this show is such a terrific

opportunity. As Jacob Landau has so memorably said, 'Without art we are an endangered and endangering species,' " Gaffney said.

The original drawings, limited-edition prints, watercolors and stained-glass designs included in the exhibition chart the evolution of Jacob Landau's career, which progressed from commercial illustrator to national treasure, from Captain America of Marvel Comics to the Hebrew prophets depicted in the towering windows created for Philadelphia's Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel.

Jacob Landau in his studio

Landau perceived the arc of his life and his work in three phases.

The first was political; the second, philosophical; and the third, prophetical. The latter two are represented in the works included in the exhibition: among them, a series of Buchenwald woodcuts and a suite of Holocaust lithographs from the 1950s and 1960s; and from his later years, Landau's Dante Cycle of lithographs and the biblical windows.

"Jacob Landau: Dialoguing With Humanity" is co-curated by Scott Knauer, director of galleries and collections, and Rosa Giletti, Landau's late-life muse and representative, and was spearheaded by Landau friend and collector Saliba Sarsar, associate vice president of academic program initiatives at the university.

Landau was born in Philadelphia in 1917 and died in 2001 at the age of 85. He was buried beside other renowned Roosevelt artists like Ben Shahn and Gregorio Prestopino.

Detail of a stained-glass window for Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel.

As a young man, Landau studied at the Philadelphia College of Art, in Paris, and at The New School in New York. He served with the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II and in 1955, Landau became part of the legendary artists' enclave in Roosevelt, where he lived and worked from his studio in a geodesic dome for the rest of his life.

He was professor emeritus of the Pratt Institute and an instructor for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His work has been shown in scores of solo and group exhibitions worldwide, and is included in the permanent collections of museums, educational and cultural institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bibliotéque Nationale, The National Gallery and The Library of Congress. He was the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Ford Foundation grant.

"I've been called a humanist. I'm involved with the tradition of protest that comes from the prophets of the Old Testament. They were concerned with justice and injustice.

"I am too," he said a few years before his death.

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.