Refugee Artist’s Watercolor Painting Returns to Oswego

OSWEGO – Come out to Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum, 22 Barbara Donahue Dr., Oswego for the return of a piece of art history! A donation ceremony to welcome German-Jewish refugee Siegfried Kuttner’s work, “Bogliasco, Genoa,” along with a significant financial contribution to the museum begins at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, June 26 and includes presentations from family and historians. The event is free and open to the public.

Chloe Horton, daughter of Roland Burton, a former English professor at Oswego State Normal and Training School (now SUNY Oswego), comes to the Port City to donate the watercolor painting by Kuttner, who escaped the Nazi Holocaust during World War II and took refuge at Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego between 1944 and 1946. She will also present a generous financial contribution of $25,000 from her family, which will aid the museum in carrying out its memorial and educational work.

The morning program includes background on Professor Burton by his family with insights into his acquisition of the painting and its subsequent history. Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, historian of American responses to the Holocaust, will contribute a short history of the artist, while museum curator Rebecca Fisher will provide notes on the painting and its relation to other refugee artwork in the collection. Finally, Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum Board President Paul Lear will speak on the significance of the gift and donation.

Kuttner was an accomplished set and stage designer in Germany, then Czechoslovakia, and finally in Genoa, Italy before escaping to the U.S. He may have been created “Bogliasco, Genoa” during this time; or from memory while he was interned at the shelter in Oswego.

Responsible for organizing shelter activities, he worked with the college in Oswego to establish an ‘art colony’ for artists who had been unable to create during the Holocaust. Professor Burton and other members of the college faculty and local community supported their shows, exhibits, musical performances and other cultural activities. In fact, a color sketch of Chloe Horton’s sister Elaine by Vladimir Zabotin was acquired and previously donated to the museum by the family.

After leaving the Oswego shelter, Kuttner returned to designing sets for plays and operas and went on to become assistant professor of stage design at the University of Texas. However, the watercolor paintings and sketches he did during his time in Oswego have left their mark.

They are the legacy of a Holocaust survivor and evidence of Kuttner’s role in helping other artists re-engage with their craft. “Bogliasco, Genoa” is a physical reminder of a bond that he helped establish between the college and shelter that continues to this day through the Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum.

For event details or museum information, call 315-342-3003 or email [email protected].

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About Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum:

The museum is dedicated to the 982 Holocaust survivors who were interned at the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter from August 5, 1944 to February 5, 1946, and to the memory of the millions of victims of the Nazi regime. 

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About artist Siegfried Kuttner:

Siegfried Kuttner was an accomplished stage designer in Germany. After being imprisoned in a concentration camp after the Nazis took power in 1933, Kuttner fled to Czechoslovakia with his wife Lotte (Charlotte), who was not Jewish, and son Peter, where he continued his stage career and was the first non-Czech appointed state designer and architect for interiors for the National Theaters of Czechoslovakia. However, in 1939, when the Nazis occupied their city, the family fled to Italy and settled in Genoa, where Siegfried continued his stage career. 

After Italy officially joined the Axis powers in June 1940, Kuttner was imprisoned again, but was then sent to free confinement in a number of small villages before finally settling in the Ferramonti camp. In July 1944, the Kuttner family was selected to come to Fort Ontario, which served as the only camp for Holocaust victims in the U.S. during World War II.

Once they arrived at Oswego, the Kuttners settled in quickly and Siegfried took a job at the shelter with camp administration. He was responsible for community activities and, in that capacity, worked with Aulus Saunders, chair of the Art Department at the college. Kuttner established an ‘art colony’ for the refugee artists at the shelter who had been unable to create art during their years of running and hiding from the Nazis and Ustase. After securing art supplies from Jewish agencies and the American Friends Service Committee, Kuttner set up studios for 24 artists, and Saunders arranged for an exhibit of Kuttner’s paintings in the college art gallery.

In September 1944, the artists of the art colony produced a public exhibition at the shelter that was widely acclaimed, well attended, and potentially influential in terms of showcasing cultural and other benefits of accepting refugees into the United States. The show was arranged by Kuttner and it featured paintings by German-Jewish refugee Hermann Bruck, whose watercolors of Italian scenes were described as brilliant gems. It also included sketches by German-Jewish refugee Miriam Sommerburg, Russian refugee Vladimir Zabotin, Russian sculptress Luba Chernitza, who studied at the Royal Academy in Rome, and Kuttner. 

In October 1944, Professor Saunders arranged for exhibits of refugee art outside the shelter and allowed refugee art students to exhibit their work at the college. Saunder’s and Kuttner’s efforts led to a publicly acclaimed arts and crafts exhibition at the shelter from April to May 1945, which, in turn, resulted in a display of their artwork in a major exhibit at the Syracuse Art Museum. Because the refugee artists were not allowed to travel beyond city limits, they could not attend these exhibits. Shelter Director Joseph Smart and Kuttner also advocated for eleven refugee artists who wanted to establish an art school that would be available to the Oswego community, feeling that with their backgrounds of persecution, their art would send a powerful message to the world.

In addition to exhibiting Kuttner’s art at the college, Professor Saunders encouraged his stage-managing career. Kuttner truly excelled at designing sets for plays and operas, many of which are seen in black and white photographs of stage productions at Fort Ontario State Historic Site. 

After the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter closed in early 1946, Kuttner and his family followed Moris Burge, former assistant director of the shelter, to New Mexico, but soon afterward settled in Austin, Texas.

When Kuttner died young at age 46 in November 1949, his career was flourishing and he was collaborating on a book to be called, “Production Methods of Opera,” with Dr. Walter R. Volbach, associate professor of drama at Texas Christian University.

Today, Siegfried Kuttner is best “recognized” for designing sets for stage productions, especially operas; art show expositions; representing painters and art marketing. However, he is perhaps best “remembered” for his surviving paintings from his time at the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter. They are a lasting legacy of a Holocaust survivor and evidence of what could have been had more people been rescued from the Nazis. Kuttner’s refugee art is also important because it shows his leadership role in reviving and encouraging artists at the shelter to take part in activities long denied them.