Lot 123A email save

RYBACK, Issachar Ber (1897-1935). Shtetl: Mayn ch

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[Berlin: "Schwellen", 1923]. Oblong folio (330 x 493 mm). Blocked half-title, half-tone illustrated title, 29 half-tone plates (numbered from III-XXXI, four printed in bistre, others in sepia or black), all after Ryback. Original blue decorated cloth-backed boards. Condition: small tears and light soiling to half-title, small tears to title, final colophon leaf with slits cut for the insertion of a smaller format sheet, the sheet not present and perhaps not required; binding discolored, lightly soiled, chipped and slightly cracked, modern endpapers. Provenance: artist's presentation inscription in blue ink on half-title page and dated September 11, 1929. RARE INSCRIBED COPY OF THIS IMPORTANT WORK. Born into an Hasidic family in the Ukraine in 1897, Ryback studied at the Art Academy in Kiev. He at first supported the Russian Revolution. He joined the Yiddish cultural organisation Kultur Lige and particpated in the attempt to create a modern Jewish national art by combining traditional folk art with avant-garde painting. The murder of his father inspired his Pogrom series of 1918, one of the most powerful depictions of anti-Semitism in modern art. He left Russia in 1921 and lived in Berlin, where he came in contact with Constructivism. The present work is a powerful depiction of a shtetl collapsing under the strain of war and revolution. (See also Lot 238.)

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