About

Julia Schor was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands before World War II. Her parents were German immigrants. During the occupation of The Netherlands by the Germans, during World War II, Julia’s mother joined the resistance and hid and saved the lives of numerous persecuted Jews, exposing herself and young Julia to continuous life-threatening danger.

Shortly after the War, painter Peter Zwart from Laren, the Netherlands, taught Julia, age ten, how to draw and paint. After high school, fashion design and execution at the Vogue Studio and fashion and model drawing at Van Braam en Wibout in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, she moved to Paris, France and enrolled in La Grande Chaumiere to get an art education. Later, back in Amsterdam, Julia followed an art teacher’s training and built an art portfolio sizable enough to be accepted by the Royal Academy of Arts in Amsterdam and to receive the probably most thorough art training in the world of that time.

A high level of energy and comradery characterized the painters’ community in Amsterdam in the fifties. Her social circle of the fifties included painters such as Jaap Wagemakers, Jan Mijer, Ernst Vijlbrief, Melle, Jan Sierhuis, Peter van Straaten and others.

In 1957, attracted by its beauty, low cost of living and freedom, she went to Ibiza, Spain, for two weeks and stayed until 1965. Here she met painters including Karel Appel, Carlos Sansegundo, Erwin Bechtold, Douglas Portway, Jan Cremer and others. She spent a year painting in Florence, Italy during this period. In the eighties Julia trained with Arthur Getz in Connecticut.

She exhibited her work in Connecticut, New York and Blaricum, the Netherlands as follows;

·         New Milford Art League, New Milford, CT, 1986

·         Washington Art League, Washington, CT, 1987

·         Brookfield Art League, Brookfield, CT, 1987

·         Linnebank Kunstgallerie, Blaricum, The Netherlands, 1997

·         Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY, 1998

·         Jewish Art Now, New York City, 2008

Julia’s work may be divided into different periods as follows:

1.      1958 - 1978: Her paintings depict her surroundings, gradually changing to sceneries as seen in a dream.

2.      1978 - 1982: Her paintings reflect her state of mind expressed in the lonely bride without a groom.

3.      1982 - 1997: Her paintings show a nude woman floating in the air. The nude woman lands in 1986. Her paintings after 1982 contain the recurring theme of life and death, (mainly in relation to World War Two) and the symbols of the church of Blaricum (=house of God), the live tree (= the Christians/Goyim), the dead tree laying over the wandering path near its end (= the Dutch Jews), the whitish colored female body/moon/bread dough/ (= female, as is the plowed earth), the sun (= male), the stars in the Heavens (= children who have died), the tulips (= new growth/hope), the Amsterdam canal houses (= Heavenly Amsterdam where Julia hopes to go after her death).

4.      1997 - 2002: Her paintings show her mother and herself as a little child (Julia’s mother passed away in 2003).

5.      2003 – Present: Her paintings show the lessons she has learned.

She lives and paints in New York City and New Lebanon, Upstate New York.