Head of a Young Jew, Natan Altman’s most famous sculpture, is an expression of his desire to set a new, modern course for Jewish art. The asymmetrical sculpture, a combination of bronze, copper, and wood, resembles a figurehead adorning the prow of a ship.
Solomon Mikhoels (1890–1948), a Yiddish actor, director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (GOSET), and later chair of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was an iconic figure of Soviet Jewish…
1. What religion do you profess?
I believe in the Mosaic Religion, which was revealed by the Lord; and I esteem the same as the true, pure, and unmixed word of God.
2…
Flags like this, made of paper, decorated, and attached to a stick—sometimes with an apple and a small lit candle atop it—were commonly carried by children during Simḥat Torah celebrations. The…
The Russian Jewish and Soviet painter, theatrical designer, and sculptor Natan Altman was born in Vinnitsa (today, Vinnytsya, Ukraine). He studied in Odessa from 1903 to 1907 and moved to Paris in 1910, before returning to Russia. Like his contemporaries Marc Chagall and El Lissitzky, the young Altman was influenced by cubism and other emerging postrealist and postimpressionist approaches and generally saw himself as part of the general Russian-European art scene. Yet during World War I and the early years of the Russian Revolution, Altman also briefly grew interested in traditional East European Jewish folk art and in the possibility of a modernist Jewish national art. In those years, he produced his most famous sculpture, entitled Head of a Young Jew (Self-Portrait); an emblem in the Jewish folk style for the Hebraist youth publishing house Ahinoar; and abstract constructivist set designs for the burgeoning modernist Yiddish theater. Altman lived abroad from 1928 to 1935, and when he returned to the Soviet Union, he agreed to work in the then-required style of socialist realism.
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St. Petersburg, Russian Empire (St Petersburg, Russia)
Solomon Mikhoels (1890–1948), a Yiddish actor, director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (GOSET), and later chair of the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was an iconic figure of Soviet Jewish…
1. What religion do you profess?
I believe in the Mosaic Religion, which was revealed by the Lord; and I esteem the same as the true, pure, and unmixed word of God.
2…
Flags like this, made of paper, decorated, and attached to a stick—sometimes with an apple and a small lit candle atop it—were commonly carried by children during Simḥat Torah celebrations. The…