November 2024 marked the 144th anniversary of Mark Antokolsky’s birth. A world-famous Russian sculptor of Jewish origin, a prominent representative of the academic movement in classical sculpture, he put Russian art on the world sculpture scene in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. To mark this memorable date Grig-film studio shot a documentary “Mark Antokolsky’s Russia” (directed by Grigory Ilugdin). The film was aired in early December and is already available on video resources at the following links:
https://rutube.ru/video/be825297d34c7f18f400220297880d85/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-rdbQcN-Y8
Our Museum offered all possible assistance to the crew creating the film, providing the filming locations inside our permanent exhibition and storerooms. According to the director's idea, this made it possible to convey the atmosphere in which little Mordukh (Mordko) – the future great sculptor Mark Matveevich Antokolsky – showed his talent. One of eight children in a poor religious Jewish family, Mark drew a truly lucky ticket and was able to break free from the usual circle of the Jewish shtetl. St. Petersburg became his home base, and even after leaving, he considered himself a Russian artist until the end of his life.

Mendel Gorshman. "Construction site in Birobidzhan". Lithograph. 1935.
Soon after the proclamation of the Jewish Autonomous Region in 1934, OZET (Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land) and VsekoKhudozhnik (National Cooperative Union of Fine Arts Workers) organized a creative mission to Birobidzhan. The goal was to present to the general public the achievements of the region, accomplished since the arrival of the first settlers in 1928. The creative team included Yevgeny Lvov, Roman Gershanik, Lev Zevin, Mikhail Shteiner and Mendel Gorshman, who were later joined by two more artists already resident in Birobidzhan: Yosif Zisman and Boris Rozenblit. Despite the fact that the Jewish population in the new region did not exceed 20%, Birobidzhan continued to serve as a symbol of Jewish nation-building in the state propaganda until the end of the thirties.
The artists on the mission sought to convey the “conquest of the taiga” through landscapes emphasizing the transition from rural, untouched nature to full-fledged cities and industrial centers. The collection of the Museum of Jewish History in Russia includes some of the drawings, engravings, and watercolors created by Mendel Gorshman during this trip. Color lithograph “Construction Site in Birobidzhan”, created in 1935, is particularly indicative of the artist’s take on the genre. A diagonal strip of land running along the river separates a section of virginal land on the left from the construction site that gives the work its name. Through this simple device, the composition emphasizes the contrast between old and new and, therefore, the transitional quality of Birobidzhan – a territory that is neither rural nor urban, but rather is still in the process of transformation. Electricity grids, trucks and multi-story buildings coexist here with dirt roads, modest houses and farm animals. The promise of a bright Jewish future is written on the landscape, but not yet fulfilled. “Construction site in Birobidzhan” was included in the exhibition “The Jewish Autonomous Region and Jewish National Districts in Painting and Drawing” (Moscow, 1936) – a project designed to summarize the achievements of Soviet national policy in resolving the “Jewish question”. Only two years after the exhibition, KOMZET (Committee for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on the Land) and OZET were liquidated, many of their leaders were shot or imprisoned, and resettlement to Birobidzhan ceased until the end of World War II. Under this gloomy light, the construction sites began to look more and more like ruins.

Cover of “The Jewish Autonomous Region and Jewish National Districts in Painting and Drawing” (1936) exhibition catalogue (Russian State Library)

Mark Epstein: “Man with a Scythe”. Ink on paper. 1927. From the series "Jewish collective farms. Crimea"

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Empire became the epicenter of the movement aimed at the formation of modern Jewish art. For a short, but fruitful period, the young generation of artists, well versed in the achievements of both Western avant-garde art and Jewish traditional culture, managed to synthesize the lessons of cubism, futurism and expressionism with the plastic qualities of folk ornament, which at that time were discovered by ethnographic expeditions. To a large extent, this project became possible thanks to the efforts of the Kultur-Lige – an organization founded in Kiev in 1918 with the goal of developing Jewish secular culture in Yiddish. Its artistic department determined the contours of the new national style through exhibitions, publishing and educational activities. When at the end of 1920 the Communist Party took control over the Kultur-Lige, many of its members left Kiev and settled in other cities. Among those who decided to stay was Mark Epstein – a sculptor and graphic artist, one of the founders and first teachers at the Kultur-Lige art studio.
In 1924, the studio came under the control of the Yevsektsiya (the Jewish section of the communist party) and received a new name: the Jewish Art and Industry School. Epstein served as director until the institution’s closure in 1931. Under his leadership, students focused primarily on themes of shtetl life, but not only them. According to a brief report published in the magazine Soviet Art, in the summer of 1927, Epstein and his students traveled to the Jewish colonies of Crimea to make life sketches. As Rybak’s earlier graphic series showed, the theme of the “new Jew” working the land was relevant both for the Soviet authorities, who were promoting the resettlement campaign, and for artists interested in contemporary Jewish life. The decision to undertake this trip may also have been influenced by the fact that the Kiev school was partially financed by the Joint, an American charity that was actively involved in the process of agricultural colonization.
One of the ink drawings made by Epstein during his trip to Crimea now resides in the collection of the Museum of Jewish History in Russia. In the center of the sheet is the figure of a standing colonist holding a scythe. The visual treatment is extremely laconic and cursory, but at the same time a feeling of volume and a monumental sense of form predominates in the sketch. The massive torso, bare feet and powerful arms serve as accent points of the composition, thereby drawing attention to the metamorphosis of Jewish physicality under new circumstances. Despite the obvious physical strength of this mower, the image does not quite fit into the heroic model common in official art and visual culture: the static pose of the hero, devoid of pathos, rather hints at the fatigue of an inexperienced farmer after a hard day's work.

Issachar Ber Ryback: «Evening Mood» and «Synagogue in the Barrack». Album of lithographs «On the Jewish Fields of Ukraine» (1926).
The graphic album «On the Jewish Fields of Ukraine», published in Paris in 1926, resulted from a two-month journey by Issachar Ber Ryback through the Jewish colonies of Kherson region and Crimea in the summer of 1925.
Before his brief return to the Soviet Union, the artist spent three years in Berlin, where he, besides participating in modernist associations, worked with promotional materials design for ORT. This charity was dedicated to providing Eastern European Jews with the skills and equipment needed to work in industry and agriculture. Collaboration with ORT allowed Ryback an insight into the process of agricultural colonization taking place in the USSR and likely sparked in him the interest in seeing the experiment with his own eyes.
In previous lithographic albums, such as «Shtetl. My destroyed home: a Memory (1923)», Ryback sought to convey the experience of Jewish life in the shtetl through a specific formal vocabulary. Dark tones, expressionistic distortion of figures, and a violation of traditional perspective created gloomy images based on the ever-present threat of pogroms. In contrast, the idea of the Jewish rebirth on soil, proposed in the Paris album, relied on soft strokes, a high-key tone, and greater naturalism.
One of the most interesting features in this album concerns the transition from the old world to the new, as the settlers brought with them a heritage of material culture that did not easily fit into their new surroundings. The lithograph titled «Evening Mood» synthesizes this opposition in the motif of a broken wardrobe in the open air, an object brought from the shtetl by the owners unaware that it would not fit into the modest huts of the Crimean steppe. A similar manifestation of the shtetl in the world of Soviet Jewry can be seen in the sheet «Synagogue in the Barracks», a rare image for the period of state atheism. Alluding to the conventional interpretation of space characteristic of the «Shtetl» series, the artist presents an improvised synagogue as a fragile repository of tradition in the middle of the fields.
The album «On the Jewish Fields of Ukraine» was published in a total print run of 300 copies in three languages (Yiddish, English, and French). It is worth noting that the collection of the Museum of Jewish History in Russia holds one of the few signed numbered copies in Yiddish with color lithographs.

We are happy to announce that the first master's degree thesis based on materials from our Museum has been successfully defended. 
It is probably nothing special, but this is the first time in the short life of our museum. And we can definitely say that the experience has been positive! We are happy to take advantage of the new Master of Arts' permission to publish those fragments of her research that concern our material. Her permission also extends to publishing some background information about her work:
Institution hosting the defense: Department of Humanities at the Higher School of Economics National Research University (Master's program "History of the visual сulture and the art market").
Subject of the thesis: Jewish agricultural colonization in the USSR and its representation in Soviet and American art of the interwar period.
Title: Jewish land settlement in the USSR through the prism of visual art (1925-1937): the politics and poetics of representation.

The abstract:
«In 1924, the Soviet government launched a campaign to convert the masses of Jewish peddlers, shopkeepers, and small traders living in the former Pale of Settlement into farmers. The image of the reborn Jew working the land was not only encouraged by the Bolshevik regime to demonstrate the supposed success of its minorities’ politics: it also captured the imagination of artists and foreign charities hoping for Jewish emancipation and cultural autonomy in the Soviet Union. The result of these intersecting perspectives was a series of representations of the «new agricultural Jew» in art and visual culture in the interwar period.
The thesis examined examples of visual art created in connection with the context of Jewish land settlement in Southern Ukraine, Crimea and Birobidzhan between 1925 and 1937. The chronology begins with Issachar Ber Rybak's trip to the colonies of Kherson and Crimea in the summer of 1925 (an experience that resulted in the publication of the album «On the Jewish Fields of Ukraine» in Paris a year later) and ends with the state-funded and directed creative expeditions of the 1930s»

A new temporary exhibition “Jewish Avant-Garde. Chagall, Altman, Shterenberg and others” was inaugurated on the 6th of March in the Jewish Museum and the Tolerance Center. It is dedicated to one of the most striking periods in the culture of Russian Jewry.
After the revolution, talented Jewish artists and writers flocked to Moscow and Petrograd, where they played a vital role in the formation and development of the Soviet avant-garde. At the same time, thanks to the newfound freedom of creative thought, this period became a time of unprecedented national upsurge inside the Jewish culture, which sparked an interest in national folk art.
The exhibition demonstrates the evolution of the Jewish avant-garde in Russia – from the actualization of Jewish folk art, adaptation of its manner, and stylization of motifs to the avant-garde stage, expressed in a non-objective abstract form. The largest experimental venues for new Jewish art were national theaters, primarily the Moscow State Jewish Theater (GOSET). Therefore, a fairly extensive section of the exhibition is dedicated to the theater.
Our Museum presented a loan of more than 40 collection items to the exhibition – both examples of folk decorative art and graphic art pieces, including theatrical, by Tyshler, Chaikov, Altman, and other Jewish artists. 
More about the exhibition: https://www.jewish-museum.ru/exhibitions/evreyskiy-avangard-shagal-altman-shterenberg-i-drugie/