In the late 1940s, Lazarus got a job teaching arts and crafts at the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society in west Denver, and he worked there through the 1950s. The JCRS was devoted to the care of patients with tuberculosis. At the time, Colorado was a center for tubercular care, our then-clean air being one of the attractions. Lazarus apparently kept a low profile, perhaps because his experiences in Germany had made him shy about public exposure.
He did continue working, however, as revealed by the group of locally owned pieces known to Kunin and by three other works illustrated in the Rocky Mountain News in the 1940s and '50s.
"Soldier Taking Away Two People," by Akiba Emanuel, oil on canvas.
"Seated Bronze Man with a Sword," by Akiba Emanuel, sculpture.
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According to a 1940s article by News writer Emmeline Lytle, Lazarus painted a mural, which may survive in the artist's former home on Jackson Street. As illustrated in the newspaper, it's a fresco in the form of an abstraction that extends along the living-room wall and continues outside onto the wall of the patio. The living room and the patio are divided by a glass curtain-wall trimmed in wood, but the mural appears to pass right through it. The piece features a diagonal with a large-scale composition of rectangles juxtaposed with a smaller opposing diagonal decorated with small-scale interlocking geometric patterns.
Another News article, written by art critic Alex Murphree, mentions some exhibits in Kansas and Texas featuring Lazarus's work. A lithograph by Lazarus named "The March of Time" is pictured with the story. The black-and-white print combines geometric arrangements with simplified and abstracted versions of figures. The composition is extremely awkward, with a zigzag of heads across the bottom and a sphinxlike figure on a set of steps at the top left. Murphree also mentions that Lazarus had been denied entry into the Fifteen Colorado Artists group, where his style was deemed not "modern enough." The Fifteen group was dominated by artists associated with the University of Denver.
In 1951, it was reported that, in an ironic twist of fate, Lazarus himself had come down with tuberculosis and had been admitted as a patient to the JCRS. However, he continued to teach after he was diagnosed, setting up a studio near his hospital room. A photo shows him at his easel, on which a traditional yet painterly portrait has been placed.
Lazarus died in 1964 at JCRS. In his obituary, he is described as a "nationally known artist who fled his native Germany because of Nazi terror." The obit also notes that he was survived by a daughter, Mrs. Norma Kerr of Phoenix.
I wonder how many Lazarus pieces are floating around town? Is Mrs. Kerr still living? How about former students of Lazarus? And what about that oddball lithograph, "The March of Time" -- does someone have it hanging on a wall? Or was nearly everything, like the mural in Trier, lost for all time? Are the few pieces already known by Kunin, and those back in Trier, the only Lazarus pieces left after a lifetime's work?
Kunin would like to hear from anyone with some knowledge about Max Lazarus; he can be reached by mail, in care of the Jewish Community Center, 350 South Dahlia Street, 80246.
There has been a lot of whining lately about how "provincial" Denver's art world is. But if the town's art scene of thirty to fifty years ago was already big enough to allow not one, but two modernists to get completely lost in the shuffle -- and who knows how many others -- imagine how vast and sophisticated it is now.
