Monday, 14 September 2026 at 12:30PM ET
This is a virtual event via Zoom hosted by Facing History & Ourselves.
Join us Monday, 14 September 2026 at 12:30PM ET for the Bak to the Future: Chess in the Art of Samuel Bak webinART!
Together with:
Samuel Bak – Pucker Gallery Artist
Geoff Dunn - Pucker Gallery Artist
Bernie Pucker – Gallery Director
We will celebrate the longstanding partnership between Facing History & Ourselves, the work of Samuel Bak, and Pucker Gallery. In 2010, the artist gifted a group of paintings to Facing History in a collection entitled Illuminations. More information on this partnership can be accessed here.
The exhibition Bak to the Future: Chess in the Art of Samuel Bakopens on Saturday, 19 September 2026 and will be on view at Pucker Gallery through 25 October 2026.
About Our Panelists...
Samuel Bak was born in Vilna, Poland in 1933, at a crucial moment in modern history. From 1940 to 1944, Vilna was under Soviet, then German occupation. Bak's artistic talent was recognized during an exhibition of his work in the Ghetto of Vilna when he was nine years old. While he and his mother survived, his father and four grandparents all perished at the hands of the Nazis. At the end of the war, he fled with his mother to the Landsberg Displaced Persons Camp near Munich, where he enrolled in the city's Blocherer Art School. In 1948, they immigrated to the newly established state of Israel. He studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem and completed his mandatory service in the Israeli army. In 1956, he went to Paris to continue his education at the École des Beaux Arts. In 1959, he moved to Rome where his first exhibition of abstract paintings was met with considerable success. In 1961, he was invited to exhibit at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, followed by solo exhibitions at the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Museums in 1963. It was after these exhibitions that a major change in his art occurred. There was a distinct shift from abstraction to a metaphysical figurative means of expression. Ultimately, this transformation crystallized into his present pictorial language. Bak has exhibited extensively in major museums, galleries, and universities throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States. He has been the subject of articles, scholarly works, and over twenty books, most notably a 400-page monograph entitled Between Worlds. In 2001, he published his touching memoir, Painted in Words, which has been translated into four languages, and a biography entitled Art & Life: The Story of Samuel Bak was published in 2023. A 2020 exhibition at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) led to the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, which opened Phase One at UNO in 2023. Phase Two envisions a brand new, state-of-the-art, free-standing facility to house over 500 works donated by Bak.
Geoffrey P. Dunn, MD, FACS, is an Emeritus member of the Department of Surgery of UPMC Hamot and former Medical Director of the Palliative Care Consultation Service there. He has been a visiting professor of surgery in India, Great Britain, Canada, China, and Norway. He has pioneered and written extensively about surgical palliative care. Painting has been an important activity in Dunn’s life ever since it was recommended to him at age 13 by his mother when he was confined to quarters for misbehavior at school. Upon graduation from high school, he had a one-person show of his work, earning him the school prize in fine arts. He also received the school’s prize for best historical essay in which he chronicled the development of American landscape painting during the nineteenth century. In college, Dunn majored in religion and minored in fine arts, studying with the Dutch painter Charles Stegeman. Professor Stegeman first suggested to Dunn a career in medicine: “You are a very competent painter and do fabulous work, but I believe your heart is elsewhere. I think you should be a doctor.” Dunn continued to study privately with Andrew Sanders, then after a long hiatus resumed painting during trips to the Georgian Bay region of Ontario, where he was strongly influenced by the Canadian school the Group of Seven. During the late 1990s Dunn recognized a deeper and more spiritual purpose to painting through the inspiration and counsel of Brother Thomas. At that time plein air painting had increasingly become the counterpoint and catharsis for Dunn’s career in palliative care, and later surgical palliative care. Dunn has had solo exhibitions at Pucker Gallery, Glass Growers Gallery in Erie, and the Erie Insurance Group’s gallery. He received an honorable mention from the Salmagundi Art Club in New York where he is a non-resident artist member since 2012.
Bernie Pucker is the director of Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Boston's historic Newbury Street in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “webinARTs,” and Gallery receptions. Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he has served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School, President of the Newbury Street League, and Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others. Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.