Holocaust survivor Lucy Kreisler Smith's second solo show comes courtesy of her only son

The Krakow-born artist's first exhibition was in 2002.

By Alicia Eler Star Tribune

April 23, 2025 — 7:30am

Dan Smith still isn't sure that his mother, Lucy Kreisler Smith, would have wanted to have a second solo exhibition of her work. But now it's too late. About 200 paintings, drawings, textile works, paintings on glass jars, her declarative political writings and even a piece of rug with a flower on it decorate the former FilmNorth space in St. Paul.

Kreisler Smith, who died in 2022, was one of the last Holocaust survivors living in Minnesota. She also was a prolific artist who studied in Paris in the 1960s, met an American man, immigrated to America and eventually landed in St. Paul in the 1970s.

"A lot of people didn't know that she studied fine art," Smith said. "The thing about my mom is, she wrote a book, she was very political, she wrote a lot of letters to congressmen, but her art is something she mostly did for herself."

Kreisler Smith had one exhibition back in 2002, titled "Hold to Life," but that was it.

"She sold one painting in her life, and she strongly regretted it," he said. "These were hers. I honestly don't know how she'd feel about me doing this."

None of the work in this show is for sale.

Kreisler Smith, who was Jewish, was born in 1933 in Kraków, Poland, and was just 6 years old when the Nazis invaded. Her father fled to Leningrad while she and her mother stayed behind. Her father secured fake baptism papers that saved their lives. He was killed during the war.

Kreisler Smith and her mom stayed in Poland, surviving by pretending to be Catholic.

She wanted to be a journalist, but her mother insisted that she become an artist. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, graduating in 1959, and then moved to Paris on a temporary visa to study art, honing her post-Impressionist style.

She painted what she saw: Parisian courtyards, a woman wearing a bright blue dress on a balcony, a bustling street market, female nudes. She painted a faceless girl, which Smith said is how she felt, especially during the years when she had to pretend to be someone else.

"She wanted to paint what she felt and what she saw, and she didn't want people judging her or telling her what to do," Smith said. "She felt bullied by her mother and other people could influence her very strongly."

She was supposed to come back to Poland, but ended up staying in Paris for several years and met an American man, Smith's dad, who then got a job in Germany.

Smith was born in Germany. His parents moved to America, but the marriage didn't last. Kreisler Smith settled in St. Paul in the early 1970s with her young son, suddenly an immigrant again. She later married Vigdor "Vic" Grossman.

Kreisler Smith also painted images that critiqued men, like one titled "The Man, Master of the Universe," 1969. A man wearing a red suit sits on a throne-like chair while a nude woman polishes his shoe and women of all races, naked, stand behind bars. In another, titled "Divorce," a baby suckles at the breast of a woman who looks like she is made of stone while an angel flies above.

Not much of the art directly references the Holocaust save for the chilling 1980 work titled "Holocaust Shabbat" of a skull gazing at a fish on a plate. Her son said her trauma followed her. She spoke publicly about the Holocaust and genocide, and called for social justice.

"Her father was murdered, her friends were murdered, she was kicked out of school," Smith said. "She had to pretend to be someone else. You get patterned by fear, you know. She had PTSD her whole life."

He hopes to use the exhibition as a jumping off point for promoting "The Middle Room," a 600-page book that his mom wrote about life right after the Holocaust. It's still in the process of being edited.

The exhibition made Smith reflect on his mother's writings about immigration, the attacks on immigration in America today, and the way many countries are leaning right.

"It's like: What, World War II wasn't enough, we're gonna give it another try?" he said. "If you read about the times between the two wars, it's real similar to what's going on now."