Jacob’s Ladder

Mikhail Grobman

1978

Illustration depicting fish with a line design on its back, Hebrew text across the top, and Russian text behind the fish.
Jacob’s Ladder, painted by Grobman after immigrating to Israel, continues the artistic approach he formulated in the 1960s in the Soviet Union—i.e., “magical symbolism,” which used mystical imagery and text. In this picture, a totemic fish decorated with arcane symbols (this figure appears in other paintings of his from the period) has been superimposed on a background of cursive Russian text. The Hebrew headline reads: “A ladder was placed on the ground and its top reached to the sky” (Genesis 28:12). The work dates from a period when Grobman was attempting to create a “Jewish art” in Israel unrelated to Western European traditions of modern art.

Credits

Courtesy of the artist.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 10.

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Creator Bio

Mikhail Grobman

b. 1939
Mikhail Grobman is an artist and poet. He was born in Moscow and came to Israel in 1971. In Moscow during the early 1960s, he was among the originators of the second Russian avant-garde, and in 1975, he founded the Leviathan group of artists in Jerusalem, publishing a Russian-language newspaper of that name and seeking to combine contemporary art with Judaism and mysticism.

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