Irene Lieblich

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Irene Lieblich (born Irene Wechter) was a Polish-born artist and Holocaust survivor known for illustrating the books of Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer and for paintings that celebrate Jewish life and culture. She was born on 20 April 1923 in Zamość, Poland, and died on 28 December 2008 in Miami, Florida, at age 85.

She grew up in Poland and lost her younger brother Nathan during the Holocaust. Regarding her wartime experiences, Lieblich preferred not to dwell on the details, saying she wanted to remember the Jewish souls who did not survive and to capture their spirit through her art.

In 1946 she married Jakob Lieblich and the couple moved from West Germany to Chicago. Their son Nathan was born in 1952 and their daughter Mahli (Molly) in 1953. The family later settled in Brooklyn, New York, where they lived from 1955 to 1980. There, Irene wrote poetry for Jewish periodicals, including The Jewish Daily Forward, in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Irene began painting in 1971 at the age of 48 after studying at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. She quickly gained recognition, winning first prize at the Art Festival of the Farband in 1972. Her work was shown in New York’s Artists Equity from 1973 to 1974, where Isaac Bashevis Singer saw it and asked his publishers to hire her to illustrate his children’s books, such as A Tale of Three Wishes and The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah. Another piece, Spiritual Lights over Jerusalem, was turned into greeting cards by the Zionist Organization of America.

In 1980 Lieblich moved to Miami Beach, Florida, where she continued to create. Her work was later featured in exhibitions such as Living Memories (1995) in Miami Beach and a 2004 show at the National Yiddish Library Gallery in Amherst, Massachusetts. The Shtetl Museum in Israel used her painting The World of Isaac Bashevis Singer on a commemorative poster in 2003. A 2009–10 exhibition at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in New York highlighted her art.

Lieblich once said of Singer, “My vocabulary is too limited to describe Mr. Singer’s genius.” She and Singer shared a close, mutually inspiring relationship, with her art bringing to life his memories of shtetl life and Jewish values. She was also a distant cousin of the Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz. Irene Lieblich passed away in 2008 in Miami, leaving behind a body of work that continues to illuminate Jewish culture.