Sam Bak is one of the most prolific and recognizable painters of the 20th and 21st centuries, known for a haunting visual language that appears on gallery walls and in museums around the world.

While Bak has consistently resisted being labeled a “Holocaust painter,” his life story, marked by survival, loss, and extraordinary chance, inevitably informs his work. Candles, broken tablets, chess pieces, scales of justice, dice, and architectural fragments recur throughout his paintings, serving as quiet but insistent symbols: of luck and randomness, of moral reckoning, and of how Jewish memory and tradition shape a life after rupture.

What has always struck me most when listening to Bak speak, or standing in front of his work, is not despair, but hope. Not the loud, performative kind, but something deeper and more grounded—a hope born of reflection and humility. As Bak has said, his life is the result of “many amazing things that had to happen” for him to be here. That awareness infuses his paintings with both gravity and light, tension and tenderness.

When I heard Bak speak in 2025, he shared something that really struck me: Despite all he had lived through, he had never been given the opportunity to light a yahrzeit candle for the many friends, family members, and communities he lost in the Holocaust. At the age of 92, this ritual act, so central to Jewish memory, had somehow remained out of reach.

At The Vilna, a historic building rooted in the story of Jewish Vilnius, we invited Bak to “come home” symbolically. Through conversation, storytelling, and ritual, we created space for him to share his full story and to light a yahrzeit candle in memory of those lost in Vilnius and across Europe.

Above is the conversation we shared on International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026, and may it inspire hope and a sense of purpose for us all.

Bak’s paintings are deeply layered and best experienced in person, where scale, texture, and symbolism fully reveal themselves. For those seeking that experience, his work can be seen at several institutions around the world, including:

  • Pucker Gallery, Newbury Street, Boston: Bak’s longtime representing gallery in Boston regularly stages solo exhibitions of his work and thematic shows.
  • The Samuel Bak Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania: A dedicated museum located in the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum featuring a significant number of Bak’s works donated by the artist, covering his career’s breadth.
  • Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, University of Nebraska at Omaha: Part of the university’s museum, featuring rotating exhibitions from Bak’s work and themed shows (e.g., “War Games,” “After the Storm,” “Flight and Hope”).
  • Samuel Bak Gallery & Learning Center, Holocaust Museum, Houston: Houses a permanent collection of more than 125 paintings and works by Bak, focusing on Holocaust memory, hope, and universal lessons.

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