Tomb of an Israeli Soldier I

Mikhail Grobman

1963

Painting featuring a large menorah towering over a tomb in front of hills, with crescent and full moon in the sky.
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.”

Credits

© Michail Grobman.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

Engage with this Source

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.

You may also like

Illustration depicting fish with a line design on its back, Hebrew text across the top, and Russian text behind the fish.
Tooltip info icon

Jacob’s Ladder

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…
View Source
Abstract painting of two figures with halos riding a donkey with a building on either side.
Tooltip info icon

Flight into Egypt

The title of this painting, Flight into Egypt, refers to the story in the Christian Gospels in which Joseph and Mary flee with the infant Jesus to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod. Rabin, born…
View Source
Painted bronze figurine climbing wall with no hair or shirt and silver-covered feet; tattoo of figure climbing.
Tooltip info icon

Love Dub

In Love Dub, small figures climb up the walls of the gallery wearing flipper-like footwear. A similar image was replicated in a tattoo, shown in a photograph as part of the installation. Katzenstein…
View Source