Lumières sur la ville, 2011

Zwy Milshtein  

Zwy Milshtein is a French painter of Romanian origin. He was born in Kishinev, Moldova, in 1934. In 1940 when he was six years old, the Soviet Army came and requisitioned their home, arrested his father who was then sent to Siberia, where he perished in a gulag. The families of arrested men had no rights whatsoever and could not stay in the capital. They fled to the Orgue.

In 1941 the Germans came, and again they had to flee to Tbilisi in Georgia. From 1942 to 1945 Zwy learned painting at art school. After the war he returned to Kishinev, then to Bucharest where he studied with George ?tef?nescu, painter and master of art. Milshtein has a fantastic inner world of demons and femmes fatales. His powerful and emotional work is obviously highly influenced by his early childhood, fleeing both the Russians and Nazis.

Zwy Milshtein defines himself as an expressionist artist, with influence from great masters such as Bosch, Brueghel, Goya and Soutine. In 1947 he went to Cyprus ‘en route’ to Israel. Here he was housed in a British camp, with many who had been in concentration camps before being taken by boat to Israel. In Cypress he studied sculpture with Ben Zwy. He lived in Tel Aviv then studied in the Avni School of Art, and Design in Jerusalem at Beit Zalel.

From Jerusalem he achieved a scholarship to Paris. His respect for history is reflected in his work, particularly his appreciation of prehistoric drawings such as those discovered at Lascaux (France), and Altamira (Spain), which he feels represent the birth of printing. He is an accomplished Poet, dramatist and storyteller as well as a great and gifted painter. He was the youngest member of Ecole de Paris.

In 1955 he moved to Paris and 2004 he and his partner Elisabeth moved his atelier to Villefranche. Milshtein has held numerous exhibitions in Europe, the United States and Israel. His works are in museums worldwide, and he is understandably widely collected.