Although Robi Gottlieb-Cahen has been creating paintings and drawings since the age of seven, he was reborn at forty after destroying all previous work to start from scratch. His artistic venture is distinct in part by his process of layering and unveiling, using inks and acids. These steps in his practice ultimately uncover beauty within imperfection, often working within the themes of sexuality, memory, and death.

As an artist born after the second world war, his work grapples with the Shoah. He simultaneously processes transgenerational trauma through painting imagined portraits of ancestors and elicits a specific kind of resilience within himself – “In my work, I choose life over death, and memory over absence.”

The scratches he places on his artwork often gives the viewer a sense of damage, ruin even – doubtless both personal and historical – but one that, as you take a step back, does not diminish the beauty of the face that looks back at you. The detailed scratches’ sense of ruin contributes to the sad beauty of the whole.

Robi Gottlieb-Cahen lives and works in Echternach and Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. When he isn’t creating art, he jogs around his neighborhood lake to catch sunrise hues with his dog Perla.