Yishai Jusidman. Prussian Blue

Nearly 50 paintings by the Mexican-born painter Yishai Jusidman, almost all of them in Prussian blue, hang in Block 21 of the former Auschwitz I camp. It is the first contemporary art exhibition of this scale at the Memorial. It has been on view since 9 October 2025, and the museum has not published a closing date. The museum’s words below are its own English text, from the English version of its news article.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum on the exhibition:

Starting from October 9, the Auschwitz Museum hosts an exhibition of the Prussian Blue painting series by the artist Yishai Jusidman. This is the first large-scale contemporary art exhibition at the Museum. Nearly 50 works, which have not yet been displayed in Europe, are displayed in the rooms of Block 21 at the former Auschwitz I camp.

The nearly fifty artworks in Prussian Blue are rendered almost exclusively in that color, one of the earliest artificially developed pigments used by European artists. The chemical compound that produces this blue pigment is chemically related to the prussic acid found in Zyklon B, the lethal agent used in some German Nazi concentration and extermination camps. By an unforeseen turn, conspicuous traces of the blue pigment have remained in some of the extant gas chambers.

What to expect

The paintings fill the rooms of Block 21, one of the brick blocks of the main camp. Writing for The Times of Israel, the artist describes it as the barrack that once served as the prisoners’ camp hospital. You are looking at pictures of sites of murder inside a building that is itself part of the evidence.

The core of the series is a set of painted reproductions of photographs of gas chambers at Auschwitz, Majdanek, Stutthof and Mauthausen, and of the grounds of the extermination centres at Treblinka and Sobibór. The palette is deliberately limited to three materials: Prussian blue, diatomaceous earth and flesh-coloured paint, which the artist links to the memory of those murdered. The artist, quoted by the museum, dates the series to 2010-2017. Parts of it had been shown only outside Europe before, among other places at the Americas Society in New York in 2013 and the Oregon Jewish Museum in Portland in 2023.

The museum has posted a short film from the exhibition rooms on its own channel:

Allow 30-45 minutes for the exhibition on top of your ordinary plan. The museum recommends about 1.5 hours for Auschwitz I and at least as long again for Birkenau; the exhibition adds to that plan, it does not replace any part of it.

Context

Yishai Jusidman was born in Mexico City in 1963 and lives and works in Los Angeles; for four decades he has worked on classical problems of painting and the ethics of depiction. Prussian blue was first made in Berlin in the early eighteenth century and is regarded as the first modern synthetic pigment. The same compound, a ferrocyanide, formed on the walls of rooms where Zyklon B was used, which is why blue stains can still be seen in some gas chambers today.

The series starts from an old argument. In his introduction to the exhibition, the artist recalls Theodor Adorno’s dictum that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, and notes that painters, too, took it as a warning. His answer, as he explains it in his essay for The Times of Israel, is to use the pigment in place of a symbol. The thread continues on site: in remarks quoted by the museum, Wojciech Soczewica, Director General of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, pointed to the bathhouse at Birkenau, where Zyklon B was used as a disinfectant and whose conservation had just been completed.

Tickets and time

• Admission is free, but only with a named entry card. Cards are booked only at visit.auschwitz.org ; none are issued at the entrance. The museum mentions no separate ticket or booking for this exhibition.
• Guided tours. The museum does not say whether Block 21 is part of the general tour with an educator (about 3.5 hours: the permanent exhibition and buildings of Auschwitz I, then Birkenau). If the exhibition matters to you, ask when you book whether Block 21 is on the route.
• Visits without an educator start late in the day. Entry without an educator begins at 17:00 (5 PM) in September, 16:00 in October and 14:00 in November; you may stay on the grounds for an hour and a half after the last entry time. That is a narrow window for both parts of the camp, and the museum does not say whether Block 21 is open to visitors without an educator.
• Arrive 30 minutes early - there is a security check before entry.
• The closing date is uncertain. In the English version of its news article, dated 30 December 2025, the museum wrote that the exhibition “will be open to visitors of the Museum for a year”, without naming a closing day; the artist wrote in April 2026 that it runs through October 2026. On 23 September 2026 the museum’s visiting page still lists it as on view. If this exhibition is your reason to come, do not postpone, and check the museum’s announcements just before you travel.
• Who it is for. Mainly for visitors who already know the history of the camp and want to see how contemporary painting approaches the memory of the Holocaust. On a first visit with limited time, the permanent exhibition and Birkenau come first.
• English on site: the museum publishes the exhibition’s description in English and runs guided tours in English, but it does not state the language of the labels in Block 21.

What the press says

Two voices, both informative; no critical review found.

Polish Radio Two (Dwójka) (22 January 2026, the programme “Rozmowy po zmroku”, presented by Jakub Kukla): a conversation with the artist, the designer, artist and exhibition curator Natalia Romik and Wojciech Soczewica; the station presents the show as the first presentation of contemporary art in the museum’s history - programme page, in Polish .

The Times of Israel, blogs (14 April 2026, Yishai Jusidman): the artist’s own essay, arguing that art may and must go on trying to represent the Holocaust and explaining why he chose a pigment over a symbol - essay .

Updates

• 2026-09-23 - the museum’s Visiting page still lists the exhibition as on view; no closing date has been published.

See also

• Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum - booking entry cards, types of visit, hours and getting there from Kraków.
• The Extermination of Jews in the German “Reinhardt” Operation - an exhibition at Sobibór, one of the sites Jusidman painted for this series.
• Castle Museum in Oświęcim - the town’s history before 1940, including its Jewish community; for the next day, not the same one.

Museum profile: Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum .