Halina Czajkowska Robinson of London, Ont., lived a remarkable life.
Born in Poland, the Holocaust survivor played a key role in discovering a cure to childhood leukemia. But she also left other treasures behind when she died at 94 — nearly 1,000 pieces of her artwork.
Now, her art collection is on display at an exhibit called LIFE/FORMS at London’s Satellite Project Space on Dundas Street until Aug. 19.
“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” said Moira McKee, an art appraiser and curator of the exhibit.
“Many of her peers and loved ones were quite unaware that she was producing to this extent.”
Robinson’s friends discovered the vast collection of watercolour paintings, pastel drawings, linocut and woodcut prints when they went to handle her estate as executors, said McKee, who was invited to help sort the work and get it into the public eye.
“As we were beginning to unpack the pieces that were stored, we really discovered the immense volume of this collection.”
A rich but challenging life
The daughter of a Polish military officer, Robinson fled her home to Warsaw in 1940 during the Second World War. She attended an underground school, was arrested during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 with her mother, and survived the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, according to her obituary.
After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in 1945, she fled to Sweden, where she eventually became a chemical engineer.
“Helena lived this incredibly rich but also very challenging life,” said McKee. “She has quite an incredible history.”
She moved to Canada in 1951, joining a cancer research lab at Western University, where she played a key role in discovering a plant extract’s effectiveness in treating cancer and childhood leukemia — which is still used in cancer treatment today. That’s also where she met her husband, Dr. James Russell Robinson, Western’s first PhD in chemistry.
In her retirement, Robinson spent time volunteering at Museum London and taking art courses at Western University.
WATCH | Art curator Moira McKee on the discovery of the artwork:
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Art curator Moira McKee explains the ‘immense volume’ of hand framed art by Halina Czajkowska Robinson her executors found, to the surprise of her peers
Throughout her time in Canada while she was making incredible contributions, she was also producing a vast assortment of artwork in her home studio, McKee said.
“This was a lifelong pursuit for her,” she said. “What she truly wished was for her work to outlive her.”
Relationships, nature were inspirations
McKee believes interpersonal relationships and nature were her biggest inspirations in her art, and she explored them in varying ways through the decades, she said.
“There’s a real focus on family. For Helena, family mattered a great deal because she nearly lost everything at a particularly challenging period in her life,” she said, noting woodcuts of family seated at the dinner table.
The theme of children also runs through her work, said Marianna Krol, 80, who was friends with Robinson for about three decades.
“If you know Halina’s life — the history of her life, you can find in the pictures, pieces of her life, ” she said.
Because Nazis sterilized her in Auschwitz, Robinson could not have children, although she wanted them, Krol said.
“She suffered very much about this,” she said, and Krol believes that loss is weaved through her artwork. “In her paintings, in her pictures, there are a lot of children in different stages of life.”
Robinson penned her story in a memoir, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory: A Canadian Memoir of a Happy Polish Childhood, Nazi Horror, and Swedish Refuge, which is available at the gallery.
The LIFE/FORMS exhibit runs at 121 Dundas St. from Wednesday to Friday, 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., or by appointment until Aug. 19.
