Esther Lurie | |
|---|---|
 Lurie in the 1980s | |
| Born | 1913 Liepāja, Latvia |
| Died | 14 February 1998 (aged 84–85) Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Known for | Painting |
| Awards | Dizengoff Prize (1938, 1946) |
Esther Lurie (Hebrew: אסתר לוריא; 1913 – 14 February 1998) was an Israeli painter.
After studying at theatre set design and drawing in Belgium, and immigrating to Palestine in 1934, Lurie obtained work by painting and exhibiting her art in Tel Aviv. In 1941, while residing with family in Kovno, she was deported to the Kovno ghetto during the German occupation of Lithuania. While imprisoned at the Kovno ghetto, and later the Stutthof and Ľubica concentration camps, she continued to paint and draw art, both under the surveillance of the Germans and clandestinely.
After the war, in 1945, Lurie published reproductions of her artwork in the sketchbook Jewesses in Slavery. Her sketches and watercolors documenting the Holocaust also served as part of the testimony in the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
She is a two-time recipient of the Dizengoff Prize—she received it first in 1938, for The Palestine Orchestra, and again in 1946, for Young Woman with the Yellow Patch.