A new exhibition at Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) explores the aftermath of World War II in Holland and the US through the visual art of Johannes Kunst (1938 – 2017). Focusing on one body of work by the Dutch-American artist who lived in Blaine, Washington, CoCA and Guest Curator Matthew Kangas present Hiding from the Nazis: The Art of Johannes Kunst, a survey of the paintings done later in life relating to a two-year period during World War II when the artist and his brother hid in the attic of their grandparents’ house in Opeinde to protect them from conscription into slave labor in Germany.

Alternately sad, hopeful and terrifying, the paintings brilliantly depict how art can recapture times fraught with anxiety and terror. A parallel to the Diary of Anne Frank (whose family was hiding during the same period), Hiding from the Nazis gives us a visual representation of expressively recaptured memories, broadening our picture of wartime Holland which touched non-Jewish families (like the Kunsts) as well as Jewish families. During a period now of renewed, sporadic global conflict, the exhibition is timely and responsive to current issues of authoritarianism, militarism, and resistance through the visual arts, recollected by a survivor who lived on to form a full career as an artist in the United States. A full-color catalogue will be available.