The art teacher who inspired Marc Chagall to paint Jewish men and women
Yehuda Pen showed his students that a specifically Jewish “fine” art was both possible and desirable.
El Lissitzky
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Culture When Chagall Battled For Russia’s Soul
When it was over and done with, perhaps the main thing that stood out about the Soviet Union was its success in restricting the character of its citizens. As Masha Gessen wrote in her 2016 book “The Future is History,” in every totalitarian state “The shaping of the New Man is the regime’s explicit project.”…
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The Schmooze El Lissitzky’s Everyday Avant-Garde
El Lissitzky, ‘For the Voice (Dlia golosa),’ 1923. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. “Record” is a tiny work of art, measuring no more than a few inches in either direction. But the photographic print, created by the Russian Jewish artist El Lissitzky in 1926, may be the signature piece in “Avant-Garde Art in…
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The Schmooze The Return of Mark Epshtein, a Forgotten Master of the Yiddish Avant-Garde
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish. The name Mark Epshtein (1899-1949) no longer occupies a prominent place in Yiddish cultural history, but a current exhibit in Kiev brought the artist back to the city where he created his most important work. “The Return of the Master,” which runs until February 20 at the…
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The Schmooze Alvin Lustig, a Visual Artist with Designs on Posterity.
Over a half-century after his death in 1955 at age 40, the American designer Alvin Lustig of Polish-Austrian Jewish origin is more influential than ever. “Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig,” by Steve Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen, out from Chronicle Books in October 2010, pays elegant homage to the visual thinker….
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