There is just something about seeing antique cars inside the St. Louis Art Museum that makes you feel like you’re seeing something extra special. The new exhibit, “Roaring: Art, Fashion, and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939,” features 16 of them, and is now open. The exhibition takes you on a ride back in time to when design, speed and style collided in all the right ways.
What you’ll find: more than 100 works that blur the lines between fine art and fast living. We’re talking gleaming vintage automobiles, high fashion from the golden age of couture, photography that captures Paris in motion and enough Art Deco energy to make your head spin.
And while “Roaring” isn’t framed as a Jewish exhibit, the Jewish stories are there—woven into the fabric, painted onto the surfaces and even tucked under the hood. At the Jewish Light, we look for those stories, especially the ones you might not expect. Some are bold and center stage. Others are quiet, almost invisible. But once you see them, you can’t unsee them.
Here are the Jewish stories we found just beneath the surface of “Roaring,” waiting to be discovered.
A St. Louis-born icon who became a Jewish resistance hero
Josephine Baker isn’t just a familiar name—she’s a legend. Born in 1906 in St. Louis, Baker rose from poverty and segregation to become an international superstar in 1920s Paris. The “Roaring” exhibit includes two evocative portrayals of her: a stylized 1935 portrait and a photograph with her sleek Delage D6-75—images that capture the glamour and independence she radiated.
But Baker’s story goes far beyond the spotlight. As author Karen Gray Ruelle ably proves in “Surprising Spies: Unexpected Heroes of World War II,” Baker didn’t just embrace her new life in France—she took on incredible risks to defend it. In the mid-1930s, she married Jewish industrialist Jean Lion and converted to Judaism, a decision that put her at increased risk when the Nazis rose to power. She joined the French Resistance, smuggling secret messages—sometimes written in invisible ink or hidden in her sheet music—right under the noses of Nazi officials, while continuing to perform as a cover.
According to Ruelle, Baker “didn’t have to convert, but she chose to do so.” Whether for love or conviction—or both—she put herself in extraordinary danger as a Black, Jewish, high-profile entertainer defying fascism from within. Baker’s bravery wasn’t just symbolic; it was strategic and life-threatening.
For Jewish St. Louisans, her legacy adds a powerful and personal layer to the exhibit.
The abstract artist who painted a car—and happened to be Jewish
Let’s talk about one of the most striking cars in the exhibit: a 1928 Citroën B14 Coupe, painted in bold blocks of color that practically scream motion. The look is pure Sonia Delaunay—an artist whose work brought modern art to the streets, literally. And while her influence is front and center in “Roaring”, one part of her story is left in the rearview mirror: Delaunay was Jewish.
Born Sonia Stern in what’s now Ukraine, she came from a Jewish family and ended up in Paris by way of St. Petersburg. She didn’t just dabble in color—she turned it into a lifestyle. According to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Delaunay painted walls, designed clothes, wrapped her art around everything from books to cars and basically blurred the line between fine art and fashion long before that was a thing.
And yes, she painted an actual car. In 1928, she covered this Citroën with her signature rhythmic patterns, turning a piece of transportation into a rolling piece of art.
You won’t see her Jewish identity mentioned in the exhibit, but it’s part of the story. Like so many Jewish artists of the era, Delaunay knew what it meant to migrate, adapt and build something new.
The car company founder who changed France forever
The Citroën name pops up more than once in “Roaring,” and for good reason—it marked the moment when cars stopped being just machines and started becoming something you wanted to show off.
That shift came from André Citroën, a Dutch-Jewish entrepreneur with a head for engineering and a heart for design. Born in Paris in 1878, Citroën didn’t just want to build cars. He wanted to make them beautiful, accessible and unforgettable.
He brought mass production to the French auto world after seeing it done in Detroit, then took things up a notch. He hired artists to help him design showrooms. He lit up the Eiffel Tower with his name. He turned cars into conversation pieces.
And while his Jewish identity wasn’t something he put in headlines, it was part of who he was. According to his 1935 obituary in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Citroën was “born in Paris of Dutch-Jewish extraction” and became “one of the most dramatic figures in French industry after the World War.” He died at just 57, following illness and personal loss, but his legacy lives on—in every slick curve and artful detail on display in “Roaring.”
Where art, identity and innovation meet
Across the show, you’ll find other Jewish artists, designers and visionaries who helped shape the very look and feel of the era—sometimes from behind the camera, sometimes from behind a sewing machine, and sometimes quite literally behind the wheel.
Tamara de Lempicka
Tamara de Lempicka a Jewish émigré from Poland, didn’t just paint modern women. She was one, redefining what it meant to be bold, stylish and in the driver’s seat—literally and figuratively. Her 1928 painting “Self-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti)” is highlighted in the exhibition catalogue as a defining image of interwar glamour, speed and self-made style.
Originally created for the cover of the German magazine Die Dame, the painting shows de Lempicka behind the wheel of a racing-green Bugatti, wrapped in gray silk and serving pure power and polish. “I was always dressed like the car, and the car like me,” she once said. The exhibit’s catalogue notes how the artist’s figure “merges seamlessly with the machine-picture assemblage, becoming yet another sharp-edged surface in an image world of metal and industrial varnish.”
Sarah Lipska
A Polish-born Jewish artist and designer, Sarah Lipska brings texture, movement and boldness to “Roaring.” Active in Paris during the 1920s, her work appears multiple times in the exhibition’s opening sections. Her “Winter Sports Outfit, Vest with Leg Warmers” (1925), on loan from the Musées de Poitiers, shows off her flair for mixing form and function.
Two of her textiles from 1927, are also included in the exhibition. While her name might be unfamiliar to many visitors, Lipska was a big deal in her day—collaborating with Myrbor, the influential Parisian fashion house and leaving her mark on everything from couture to stage design.
Man Ray
Born Emmanuel Radnitzky to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Man Ray brought his experimental eye and subversive spirit to Paris in the 1920s. He helped define Surrealism with a camera, a wink and a willingness to break the rules. Three of his works anchor the “Bodies Transformed” section of the exhibit.
You’ll find “Les Amoureux” (1929), a surreal enlargement of his muse Lee Miller’s lips. Nearby, “The Prayer” (1930) captures a sensual and fragmented view of a woman’s back in a way only Man Ray could deliver. And “Dadaphoto”(1920), a chaotic collage of body and object, feels like a punchline you can’t quite decode.
Ilse Bing
A pioneering Jewish modernist photographer from Germany, Ilse Bing brought precision and soul to the streets of Paris. Her photograph “Greta Garbo Poster, Paris” (1932) might be small in size, but it lands with impact.
She captures a quiet street moment that hits like a time capsule—Garbo’s face in the background, a lone figure walking by. It’s stylish and a little haunting, and that’s kind of Bing’s thing. The catalogue puts her in the mix with other émigré artists who helped define the modern look of the era. She’s not the loudest name in the show, but her work sticks with you.
Pierre Chareau
Pierre Chareau was a French Jewish architect and designer best known for his glass-and-steel masterpiece, the Maison de Verre. In “Roaring,” he shows up through furniture—specifically a desk and stool from around 1927.
It’s a sleek combo of iron and palisander wood that looks like it could’ve been pulled straight from an early auto showroom. The catalogue links Chareau to a larger wave of Jewish designers who took cues from the speed, curves and materials of the automobile world and brought that same energy into modern living spaces.
What: “Roaring: Art, Fashion, and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939”
When: Runs through July 27
Where: St. Louis Art Museum, One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park,
More Info: 314-721-0072 or
Visit them online.
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