Book
JEWISH VESTIGES IN PORTUGAL
subtitle: travels of a painter
BILINGUAL BOOK (English and Portuguese) by Laura Cesana with a poem by António Ramos Rosa and texts by art critics Fernando de Azevedo, Fernando Pernes and Lima de Freitas. Hard cover, 160 pages, 116 colored images of places and paintings, cm.32 x 23.5. Edited by the author. First edition: Lisbon 1997. Second edition: Lisbon 1998. (ISBN: 972-97370-02)
Excepts of some reviews:
"Now along comes an impressive artbook by Lisbon painter Laura Cesana (...)"
"The book also opens doors to Jewish landmarks in a way not found in the meager guidebooks that tourists usually resort to when they visit Portugal. The Cesana book is written in both Portuguese and English on facing pages. It also has a rich supplement of notes. The text, the photographs of places, objects and her art work are a very sensitive account of a five year search."
KATHLEEN TELTSCH (retired journalist of "The New York Times")
"The artist Laura Cesana presents a rare depiction of the heritage of Portuguese Jewry through history, culture, and art (...) She also remembered to include brief depictions of Portuguese Jewish settlements in Brazil, Amsterdam, and New York."
"Laura Cesana is unique in that she commemorated little-known segments of Sephardic Portuguese Jewry not only through historical and ethnographic notations, but via original paintings. Her Italian and United States background add a new perspective to viewing Portuguese Jewry. (...)"
"Cesana combines traditional still-life motifs of fruit and Jewish table settings with modernistic artistic forms - cubes, collages, overlapping, streaking, tattering, shadows, and smattering. It is thought-provoking, informative, but yet equally removed, hidden, and discrete. (...)"
"The book should be a part of anyone's library who takes an interest in Portuguese Jewry."
YITZCHAK KEREM (editor of "Sapharad")