Mommie Schwarz

Mommie Schwarz ( actually Samuel Reader Black, born July 28, 1876 in Zutphen, † November 19, 1942 in the concentration camp Auschwitz -Birkenau ) was a Dutch painter.

Black was born the tenth of eleven children of readers Black and Julia Winter. He lived from 1897 to 1899 in New York, in 1903 in Madrid. From 1895 to 1897 he studied painting at the Art Academy of Antwerp.

In 1905 he went to Berlin to study German Expressionism closer. He met his future wife, the painter Elsenberg from Ratibor. In 1911 she came both in the Netherlands and settled in Schoorl. There, they made ​​contact with the Bergen School.

1920 married Black Elsenberg. They both moved to Amsterdam. Together they visited Mallorca, countries of the former Yugoslavia, Turkey and Spain. At the beginning of the occupation of the Netherlands by the Wehrmacht in 1939, they have refused to wear the Jewish star. They were detained in the transit camp Westerbork to Auschwitz and murdered in Auschwitz -Birkenau on 19 November 1942.

Black ' works show the influence of the Bergen school, especially by Leo Gestel and Charley Toorop. He mainly painted landscapes, nudes, portraits and still lifes. Some works he painted together me Elsa mountain. Many of his images are in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.

He was also involved in commercial art, such as book covers and posters.