This Serie consists of 16 works

From the beginning, Peter Weidenbaum has painted portraits as a search for the inner human rather than outward beauty. Echoing Andrey Tarkovsky, his images carry the tension between life and death, where the image becomes a symbol of lived reality. Many portraits are based on his deceased relatives. While researching his family history during the war, Weidenbaum consulted archives from the Belgian aliens’ police, now held in the State Archives in Brussels. Painting from old, damaged photographs, he restores identity to those whose lives were marked or ended by the war. Figures such as Margarete Baron, Alexander Weidenbaum, and Joseph Weidenbaum embody this history, while the story of relatives who fled Nazi persecution reflects a broader theme of displacement that resonates with today’s refugee experience. The biographical dimension runs throughout his oeuvre. Portraits of his children recur, reflecting his focus on what surrounds him, in line with a tradition of realism from Gustave Courbet to Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Caillebotte, and, more recently, David Hockney.