Mark Podwal, a New York artist and dermatologist whose drawings and paintings often drew on Jewish history, including ritual practice and centuries of antisemitism, and who illustrated many of his friend Elie Wiesel’s books, died on Friday. He was 79 years old.
Podwal, who described himself as a “non-observant Orthodox Jew” who liked “things done the Orthodox way, as long as someone else does it for me,” first met Wiesel when the latter contacted him after seeing one of his drawings in The New York Times op-ed section, Elisha Wiesel told JNS.
That was “back when proud, non-self-hating Jewish perspectives weren’t verboten in the Times,” Elisha Wiesel, the son and only child of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, told JNS. “My father had written an op-ed criticizing the French government for ignoring the lessons of Auschwitz. Mark had drawn an Eiffel Tower dreaming of an oil well. Both pieces were in the wake of the Abu Daoud affair. That’s how they met.”
Thus began a 30-year friendship “and professional collaboration,” Wiesel told JNS. “Together, they explored Jewish storytelling and advocacy.”
“Mark was such a loyal friend. A talented doctor, he would drop everything to help my father find relief from mosquito bites,” Wiesel said. “Or accompany him last minute overseas if he wasn’t feeling well before important meetings with international dignitaries.”
Podwal created artwork for Elisha Wiesel’s bar mitzvah, as well as for the coming-of-age ceremonies of Wiesel’s own two children.
“The illustrations in the Haggadah they created together never fail to attract as much discussion at our seder as the commentary by my father, which Mark had no hesitation in driving my father to edit and improve,” Wiesel told JNS.
Podwal developed a strong connection with the Altneuschul—the synagogue in Prague that dates back to the 13th century—where he designed the ark and bimah covers for High Holidays and was proud to have his own seat. He spent many holidays there and often exhibited his work in Prague, as well as throughout the United States and Israel.
Podwal designed a Passover seder plate for the Metropolitan Museum of Art store, and sold many of his drawings and paintings through it.
The Met often included Podwal’s drawings on its website homepage, particularly around Jewish holidays. His music-themed works were also on sale at the shop of the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan.
Podwal’s works, which appear in tens of books, including his 2016 volume Reimagined: 45 Years of Jewish Art, for which Elie Wiesel wrote the introduction and the renowned Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick wrote the preface, drew often on Jewish history and rabbinic writings. His works and his writings about his art, including works he syndicated in JNS, often cited from the Midrash, Gemara, historians, poets, Jewish mysticism, and a variety of other literary and religious sources.
He told JNS that his Israeli Tank, which ran in the Times in 1989 and which depicted a tank with a Menorah’s worth of guns, is “sadly … even more relevant today.”
‘My acuity in diagnosing’
As a student at New York University School of Medicine, where Podwal earned an M.D. in 1970, he opted to study dermatology rather than surgery, so that he would have the time to practice medicine and to make art.
“It seemed natural, since as an artist I was skilled with my hands,” he told Image journal. “But when I began publishing my drawings and wanted to spend more time drawing, I realized that a surgeon’s life would leave very little time for that.”
“Because dermatology is a visual specialty, I believe my skills as an artist enhance my acuity in diagnosing,” he told the publication.
Among many of Podwal’s more famous patients in his practice, which did not include cosmetic dermatology, was Mel Brooks, who responded passionately to a drawing Podwal made of herring on a bialy since the actor and comedian’s family was in the herring business in Danzig, Poland.
“Our family was into herring two generations before I was born, so I guess they expected me, as a good little Jewish grandchild, to carry on the herring tradition,” Brooks told the Religion News Service.
“Unfortunately, I skipped over it and went into show business.”
Most recently, Podwal, who was a part of the Jewish Art Salon group in New York, designed mosaic, Zodiac-inspired floors for the Eldridge Street Synagogue in New York City.
The New York painter Archie Rand, presidential professor of art at Brooklyn College, wrote that Podwal “was a unique talent.”
“Mark’s every image was articulated simply and was memorably, boldly, iconic,” Rand wrote. “A remarkable artist without equal. His passing is a tragic loss and his contributions and personhood will long be honored by our extended community.”
Podwal is survived by his wife, Ayalah, and sons Michael and Ariel.
Elisha Wiesel told JNS that he has “never seen two sons honor their father more than these two.”
“During his illness, my wife and I sketched an illustration of our own. It was of the two young men holding up Moshe’s arms in the desert during Israel’s military battles. We put a paintbrush in one of his outstretched hands,” Wiesel told JNS. “We’ll miss him terribly.”
