Bender, Stanisław

Bender, Stanisław (Stanislaw, Stanislaus Bender), Polish painter, member of the “Munich School”. From 1908: student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, from then on resident in Munich. *1882 Łódź, †1975 Munich. Born into a Jewish family, he spends his youth in Łódź. After completing grammar school he works in a lithography workshop and starts to teach himself painting. He is discovered and promoted by a group of artists living in Łódź, and from 1904 he studies in Paris at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921) and Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1834-1912). On the 30.10.1909 he enrols in the drawing class at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, studies under Peter Halm (1854-1923, etching) and Ludwig von Herterich (1856-1932). He earns a living from designing posters and interior decorations. He lives in Munich, but visits Łódź on several occasions between 1921 and 1923 in order to participate in exhibitions of Jewish artists and work on commissions. In the 1930s he accompanies his daughter Marylka to Paris; after France is occupied by the Nazis he flees to Lourdes. He settles in Munich once more after the Second World War. Bender mainly paints dark-toned realistic Jewish subjects from Chassidic life in powerful colours, portraits of contemporary personalities, as well as landscape paintings and genre scenes from Bavaria. In 1919 Kauffmann in Frankfurt publishes a folder of his containing 12 reproductions from Jewish life. In the same year the F. Bruckmann Verlag in Munich publishes a series of his post cards with Jewish subjects. 1921: Lehrberger in Frankfurt publishes the “Tales from the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt for both the first Pessach Evenings” by Selig Bamberger with Bender’s illustrations (11th edition, Frankfurt 1938). In 1947 he paints an altar picture for one of the churches in Lourdes showing the apparition of Mary to Saint Bernadette. Reproductions of his work can be found in the Jewish Museum in Berlin; his 1919 folder and books illustrated by him are in numerous German libraries. His works appear from time to time in auctions.

Further Reading: Karl Schwarz: Stanislaw Bender, in: Ost und West. Illustrierte Monatsschrift für das gesamte Judentum, Heft 5 (May), Berlin 1911, Columns 409-412; Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, vol. 8, Munich/Leipzig 1994, p. 622

Online: Matriculation data base, Matriculation book 3, Academy of Fine Arts Munich, 03827 Stanisl. Bender, http://matrikel.adbk.de/matrikel/mb_1884-1920/jahr_1909/matrikel-03827

Muzeum Uniwersyteckie, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika: Das Leben in der Shtetl in der polnischen jüdischen Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert, http://www.muzeum.umk.pl/wystawy_sztetl_artysci.html

Baedeker łódzki, http://baedekerlodz.blogspot.com/2015/09/stanisaw-bender-artysta-zapomniany.html

Central Judaica Database, http://judaika.polin.pl/dmuseion/docmetadata?id=7033&show_nav=true

Collection in the Jewish Museum in Berlin, http://objekte.jmberlin.de/person/jmb-pers-141310

Axel Feuß, March 2017