NEIN! Boris Lurie and NO!art at Kebbel Villa, Schwandorf

On the occasion of its reopening following the completion of accessibility improvements, the Kebbel Villa presents the exhibition NEIN! Boris Lurie and NO!art.

Born in Leningrad in 1924, Boris Lurie (1924–2008) was the youngest child of the Jewish businessman Ilja Lurie and his wife Schaina, a dentist. He grew up in Riga, Latvia. Following the German occupation in 1941, the family was confined to the Riga Ghetto. On December 8, 1941, Lurie’s mother, grandmother, younger sister, and childhood sweetheart were murdered during the Rumbula massacre, in which SS units and their collaborators killed approximately 25,000 Jews in a forest outside Riga.

Together with his father, Lurie survived forced labor in the so-called Small Ghetto and subsequent deportations to the Lenta labor camp and the concentration camps of Salaspils, Stutthof, and Buchenwald. In April 1945, father and son were liberated by U.S. troops at the Magdeburg-Polte subcamp.

In 1946, they emigrated to New York City, where Lurie lived and worked until his death. He described himself as a “privileged” survivor and rejected the notion of seeing himself primarily as a victim. Nevertheless, violence, the abuse of power, and the vulnerability of the individual in the face of historical catastrophe remained central themes throughout his artistic practice.

Although his formal education ended at the age of sixteen, Lurie attended painting and drawing classes at the Art Students League in New York. He developed an uncompromising artistic language that combined painting, collage, photography, and assemblage. Through the provocative juxtaposition of Holocaust imagery with motifs drawn from mass culture and consumer society, he created works that challenge viewers both politically and morally.

The exhibition at the Kebbel Villa brings together key works from across Lurie’s career, beginning with the early War Series of 1946, which remained unexhibited during his lifetime. Particular emphasis is placed on works from the formative years of the NO!art movement in the early 1960s. The presentation is complemented by selected works by Lurie’s fellow NO!art founders Sam Goodman (1919–1967) and Stanley Fisher (1926–1980).

A special focus is placed on four undated works by Lurie in which the German word “NEIN” occupies a central role. Presented publicly for the first time, one work is installed in each of the exhibition’s four galleries.

Having learned German from an early age and attended a German-language secondary school, Lurie regarded German as his “second mother tongue,” despite the traumatic experiences he endured during the Nazi era. He did not reject Germany outright; indeed, during the 1970s he seriously considered relocating from New York to Berlin.

The anti-commercial ethos at the heart of NO!art also shaped Lurie’s relationship to the art world and its market structures. As a result, he was generally reluctant to sell his work. To support himself, he worked for several years as a fashion illustrator, received compensation as a Holocaust survivor, and later invested successfully in real estate and small-cap stocks, which ultimately formed the basis of his estate.

Lurie’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany and internationally, including at the Neues Museum, Nuremberg (2017, 2024, 2025); the Center for Persecuted Arts, Solingen (2022); the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York (2022); the Riga Bourse Art Museum (2020); the Jewish Museum Berlin (2016); and the Buchenwald Memorial (1998/99). His works are held in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Since his death, scholarly publications, exhibitions, and the activities of the Boris Lurie Art Foundation have contributed significantly to preserving and promoting his legacy internationally.

A richly illustrated exhibition catalogue featuring essays by Rudij Bergmann, Jürgen Dehm, Georg Imdahl, and Dietmar Rübel, published in both German and English, is forthcoming.

Curated by Jürgen Dehm, NEIN! Boris Lurie and NO!art is organized in collaboration with the Boris Lurie Art Foundation.