Tomb of an Israeli Soldier I

Tomb of an Israeli Soldier I was one of a series of works painted by Michail Grobman at a time when any sympathetic gesture toward Israel was, for Soviet Jews, an act of defiance. Grobman’s very style was a protest against socialist realism, the only style sanctioned by the Soviet state. He had begun to formulate an approach to art that came to be known as “magical symbolism,” which used biblical and kabbalistic symbols to assert a connection with a world of the past that the Soviets rejected and sought to eradicate. On the tomb he added two Hebrew words meaning “Say to God.”