The Book
INTO THE LIGHT
The Healing Art of
Kalman Aron
by Susan Beilby Magee
A six-year-old girl sits for her portrait by an unknown artist…. Fifty years later, he asks her to write his story.
INTO THE LIGHT is a profound, visual story of hope, courage and healing in the face of evil. It relates the epic life journey of Kalman Aron who emerges from the ashes of the Holocaust to explore the nature of humankind, his own humanity and the mystery of life—all on canvas.
Born in Riga, Latvia in 1924, Kalman Aron began drawing at age three. At seven, he had his first gallery show of drawings, which sold out on the opening day. The nation’s president commissioned the boy to paint his official portrait and arranged for Aron to attend Riga’s Academy of Fine Arts. Three years later, in 1941, the Nazis invaded Latvia, massacring many thousands of Jews—including his parents. Over the course of four years, he was imprisoned in the Riga ghetto and in seven camps across Europe. Aron became an astute observer of human nature; he drew portraits of guards who sometimes paid him with morsels of food that saved him from starvation. After the war, he was admitted to the Vienna Fine Arts Academy, where he received his Masters in Fine Art, then left Europe to settle in Los Angeles in 1949.
Kalman Aron’s early post-war pictures darkly project Holocaust horrors, then in the slow course of healing and freeing himself from his past, Aron’s work gains poise and an inner perspective that radiates new and ever-changing vitality. He becomes well-known for his portraits, vibrant landscapes and intriguing studies of people in his unique style, “psychological realism.” His work soon catches the attention of Hollywood celebrities and connoisseurs alike, and commissions arrive from such notables as Ronald Reagan, Henry Miller and André Previn.
INTO THE LIGHT is a dazzling story of the alchemy of the soul. Author Susan B. Magee weaves Aron’s first-person memoir with her third-person critical biography and study of the evolution of his paintings. In her words, “this book is a universal story about healing. Its lessons relate to all who have suffered—physically or psychologically, whether collectively or individually. I hope it may guide all who seek to put their suffering aside and reclaim their light.”
Book details:
INTO THE LIGHT: The Healing Art of Kalman Aron
by Susan Beilby Magee
11 x 10 inches, 224 pages, hard cover with dust jacket,
210 color plates, 30 black and white images.
ISBN: 978-1-55595-385-0
Co-published by Hard Press Editions and Posterity Press, Inc. in association with Hudson Hills Press.
Publication date: October 16, 2012
List Price: $50