Mark Podwal: Kaddish for Dąbrowa Białostocka features a series of eighteen drawings that were completed following Podwal's 2016 visit to the shtetl in Poland where his mother was born. The series is a visual diary of his journey to Dąbrowa and is based on what he saw in the town and what he heard from elderly residents as they reminisced about their former Jewish neighbors while filmed by Tomasz Wisniewski for his documentary, The Absent Family: Reading the Ashes – Following in the Footsteps of the Jews of Dąbrowa.
Mark Podwal may have been best known initially for his drawings on The New York Times Op-Ed page. In addition, he is the author and illustrator of numerous books. Most of these works - Podwal's own as well as those he has illustrated for others - typically focus on Jewish legend, history, and tradition.
His art is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Israel Museum, the Bodleian Library, the Jewish Museums in Prague, Berlin, Vienna, and New York, among many other venues.
