My artwork Caute – Spinoza at Miami Art Week
Caute - Spinoza, sculpted canvas, 36 x 24 inches
My sculpted painting “Caute – Spinoza” is on view in the Metaverse section of the Jada Art Fair, on South Beach near Fontainebleau at the Miami Beach JCC.
This year Jada highlights the Sephardic role within the Global Culture, Arts, and Technological development: From Sefaradi into the Metaverse.
Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch Sephardic philosopher; this painting examines his complex legacy.
This is an International Art Fair of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Installations, NFTs, Immersive & Metaverse Experiences.
Daily programming and art tours.
December 1st – 4th, 2022, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m
Miami Beach JCC, 4221 Pinetree Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33140
More info on Jada at Miami Art Week: https://jadaartfair.com
Ori Z. Soltes about Caute-Spinoza:
Yona Verwer’s “Caute-Spinoza” (Caute in Latin means “be cautious”) features Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century philosopher of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin, born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Spinoza, whose ancestors had fled the Inquisition for the Netherlands, had a traditional Jewish upbringing, but as a young adult came to believe that human beings should live their lives guided by reason. His highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine, caused him eventually to be expelled from the Jewish community.
Today, Spinoza is remembered for rejecting divine transcendence in favor of rationality, a concept that paved the way for the Enlightenment. Spinoza suffered for his beliefs in a way that was different and yet intricately bound to the suffering his Sephardic ancestors had endured just a few generations earlier.
Verwer’s artwork breaks through the painting’s normative flat surface and offers a metaphor for Spinoza’s intellectual break from normative thinking. A diagonal slit created by two canvas flaps bear the word “caute,” referring to Spinoza’s signet ring with that inscription on it. Pushing open the slits, the viewer encounters hidden images linking past to present.
