Nathan Brujis: Spirituality and the Subconscious

Nathan Brujis was born in Lima, Peru in 1971, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He studied art and philosophy at Brandeis University and graduated from the American University, Washington D.C., with a master’s degree.

He was awarded the Deborah Josepha Cohen Memorial Award for Excellence in Painting in 1992; the New York Studio School Faculty Award in 1994; and il Premio per la Pittura Lorenzo il Magnifico at the Florence Biennale d’Arte Contemporanea in 2001 and 2003. He has exhibited extensively in New York, Peru, and Italy, and now lives and works in New York.

In his early work of the 1990s, seen here in Menorah, Paracas, and the New York School, Adam and Eve, and Spirit Light Through the Temple Window, his Jewish heritage is evident. In much of his work in the early 2000’s through 2015 he experimented and produced drawings and watercolors on paper. His paintings created since 2020 are the result of an on-going act of discovery rather than a planned design. As he works on a painting he thinks about the space, the colors, and their reactions to each other. And so, the painting grows, and becomes a whole. In art mirroring the power of the subconscious and the spiritual, his recent works speak to the artist’s interest in the sciences and philosophy and how they intersect with and affect art.

Nancy Mantell, Curator
Susan H. Picker, Assistant Curator

Location: Heller Museum, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion,
One West Fourth Street, New York
Admission: Free, photo ID required.
Hours: Mondays through Thursdays, 9 am – 6:30 pm
Tours/Information: hellermuseum@huc.edu; 212-824-2218
Download: The artists’ guide to this exhibition on the free Bloomberg Connects app.