Leo Muellner

Eitz Chayim Sanctuary Mural: Eastern Wall

The first phase of the Eitz Chayim Sanctuary Mural explores the history and cultural roots of Boston’s Jewish community, and the multi generational quest to form an identity that is both authentically Jewish and wholly American. 

The mural contains a mix of patterns and imagery from the Ashkenazi and Sephardic worlds, and the immigrant experience here in Boston. This includes:

The works of itinerant muralist Israel Ben Mordechai Lissnicki (late 17th-early 18th century) that once covered the ceiling of the now destroyed Chodorow and Gwozdziec synagogues in present day Ukraine.

An early 20th century Hanukkiah from Laghouat, Algeria

Pieces of machinery from the textile mills of Lawrence and Lowell

The Vilna Shul and the Walnut Street Synagogue in what were once the thriving Jewish communities of the West End and Chelsea.

The mural is a mix of screen printing and acrylic paint on aluminum composite panels.

The Landscape of Revolution weaves together two abiding themes in the artist’s imagination and family history--the Russian Revolution and the Russo-Jewish saga.  The first strand draws its inspiration from the landmark moments of the Russian Revolution.  During the Cold War, these events were drilled into the heads of nearly half the world’s school children as the glorious and necessary steps to the successful completion of any revolution.  As attitudes towards the Russian Revolution have changed, and the Cold War has been eclipsed by other more pressing turmoils, these events have lost much of their revolutionary urgency,  and even in Russia, the “Great October Socialist Revolution Day” was first rechristened “Reconciliation and Accord Day,” and Putin has sought to stamp out whatever radical embers lingered by canceling this tepid holiday and replacing it with a nationalist “Unity Day” commemorating a 1612 uprising against Polish occupiers.  The Landscape of Revolution seeks not to rehabilitate the Great Deeds of 1917, or take sides in the struggle over its memory, but rather to re-imagine them within their newly evolving context.  While for most of the 20th century the heroic struggle that each act symbolized was paramount, now the vastness of the land and Russia’s glowing White Nights overshadow the once essential tragedies and triumphs of the revolution.  

Intermingled with this theme--just as it was a century ago--is the Russo-Jewish story.  For Russia’s Jews, the Revolution was a time of great hope and tragedy.  The socialist vision of equality among all classes and races inspired millions of Jews to support the Cause, and many of the leading revolutionaries were Jewish.  At the same time, the destruction wrought by the Civil War, and waves of pogroms unleashed by the anti-Bolshevik White Guard drove millions more to emigrate.  These themes which haunt every revolution--liberation and destruction, hope and betrayal--surface throughout Muellner’s  Landscape of Revolution.   

Tell the Boys I Died for My Class examines romance and religion of American Leftism.  The work takes the form of a hagiography on the martyrs and heroes of the turn-of-the-century American Left.  In its lighting and scale, it seeks to do for American radicalism what Caravaggio did for Christianity—create riveting iconic images glorifying the sacrifices of the founding martyrs. In so doing, it hope to fill in a gap in the American left’s religious credentials—adding a catalogue of paintings to the liturgy and catechism, taboos, high priests and vestments which already give Leftism the trappings of religious faith. 

This series also seeks to capture the spirit of a very different time in American politics.  A century ago America’s leftist politicians and labor leaders bestrode the land as terrifying colossi.  To their followers the Revolution seemed near and inevitable—a national strike or a wave of letter bombs could topple the capitalist system.  To their opponents they appeared as fantastical foreign monsters (though nearly all were native), assaulting the American order with the savage bravado of King Kong atop the Empire State.  The organs of the State—the Yellow Press, the bosses, the proto-Brown Shirt American Legion--reacted with swift brutality.  Labor leaders and politicians were black listed, beaten, lynched, executed or jailed after sham trials.   In 1919 those who survived the initial purges were rounded up at Ellis Island and exiled to the new socialist Monster Island—the Soviet Union. 

Seven Great Losers of History