Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 9

Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan
Russian Judaica Shtetl Klezmer Musicians

$2,200
£1,670.20
€1,910.36
CA$3,073.72
A$3,418.65
CHF 1,785.11
MX$41,601.29
NOK 22,798.59
SEK 21,381.06
DKK 14,257.71
Shipping
Retrieving quote...
The 1stDibs Promise:
Authenticity Guarantee,
Money-Back Guarantee,
24-Hour Cancellation

About the Item

Pastel or Tempera on paper. Judaica Shtetl scene of village. Anatoli Lwowitch Kaplan was a Russian painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose works often reflect his Jewish origins. his father was a butcher in Rahachow which was at that time within the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia. His background was therefore not dissimilar to that of Marc Chagall, born a generation earlier in 1887, and although their lives were very different, their art has much in common. The shtetl figures in many of Kaplan's paintings - autobiographical references are very clear in The Butcher's Shop (1972) and Tailor's Shops (1975) and in the many illustrations which he was to create to the works of Sholem Aleichem. Along with Mane Katz, Issachar ber Ryback and Yankel Adler he was one of the artists who brought the joy and mystery of the Shtetl to Western Europe. Around 1922 Kaplan came to Leningrad (then named Petrograd), where he was to base his career for the rest of his life, although he often revisited the towns of his childhood. He graduated in 1927 from the Russian Academy of Arts there. In the 1930s he became associated with a group of artists and lithographers in Leningrad which had been instructed to prepare a series of works dedicated to the remote Jewish Autonomous Oblast, being created by Joseph Stalin in the hope of resettling Russia's Jewish population in a remote area in the Far East of the country. Here Kaplan learnt and took to the skills of printmaking, developing many individual techniques. His first cycle of prints (1937–1940) was entitled Kasrilevka, (the name of the village invented by Sholem Aleichem). During the war Kaplan was at first evacuated to the Urals, but returned to Leningrad in 1944. His lithograph cycle of Landscapes of Leningrad during the Days of the Blockade(1948) was widely acclaimed in Russia and was purchased by eighteen State galleries. From the 1950s onwards Kaplan's artworks concentrated on Jewish themes, despite constant and often serious opposition and obstruction from the Soviet cultural authorities. Amongst these works should be mentioned his cover and illustrations to the Jewish Folksongs of Dmitri Shostakovich (1977), illustrations to Aleichem's Tevye the Milkman (3 series, 1957–1966), The Enchanted Tailor (1954–57) and Song of Songs (1962), and a magnificent series of coloured lithographs (printed in London in 1961) on the old JewishPassover song Chad Gadya (One Kid Goat). Throughout this time Kaplan was also producing paintings though in view of their subject matter they were rarely displayed in the Russia of his time. From 1967 onward he began also to produce ceramics and sculptures, including a remarkable set based on the characters of Gogol's Dead Souls. A substantial retrospective exhibition of Kaplan's work was held at the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, in 1995. Other major exhibitions have been held in New York City (1992),London, Amsterdam, Jerusalem and elsewhere.
  • Creator:
    Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan (1902 - 1980, Russian)
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 23.75 in (60.33 cm)Width: 19.5 in (49.53 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU38210500742

More From This Seller

View All
Shtetl Klezmer Musician painting and drawing
By Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan
Located in Surfside, FL
Pastel or Tempera on paper. Judaica Shtetl scene of village. This one depicts a Klezmer musician fiddler playing his violin. Anatoli Lwowitch Kaplan ...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pastel, Tempera

Three Klezmer Musicians Modern Judaica Shtetl Oil Painting WPA Jewish artist
By Maurice Kish
Located in Surfside, FL
Genre: Modern Subject: Klezmer Musicians Medium: Oil Surface: Board, size includes artist decorated frame without frame 16X12 Country: United States The imagery of Maurice Kish (189...
Category

Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil

Shtetl Scene
By Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan
Located in Surfside, FL
Pastel or Tempera on paper. Judaica Shtetl scene of village. Anatoli Lwowitch Kaplan was a Russian painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose works often reflect his Jewish origins. h...
Category

20th Century Modern Landscape Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Acrylic Polymer, Pastel

Pastel on paper Shtetl Scene
By Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan
Located in Surfside, FL
Pastel or Tempera on paper. Judaica Shtetl scene of village. Anatoli Lwowitch Kaplan was a Russian painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose works often reflect his Jewish origins. h...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pastel

Chaim Gross Judaica Jewish Watercolor Painting Rabbi Klezmer Music WPA Artist
By Chaim Gross
Located in Surfside, FL
Chaim Gross (American, 1904-1991) Watercolor with pencil painting Rabbi Klezmer music concert, flute player. Hand signed framed: 15 X 28.5, paper: 9.5 X 23 Chaim Gross (March 17, 1904 – May 5, 1991) was an American modernist sculptor and educator. Gross was born to a Jewish family in Austrian Galicia, in the village of Wolowa (now known as Mezhgorye, Ukraine), in the Carpathian Mountains. In 1911, his family moved to Kolomyia (which was annexed into the Ukrainian USSR in 1939 and became part of newly independent Ukraine in 1991). When World War I ended, Gross and brother Avrom-Leib went to Budapest to join their older siblings Sarah and Pinkas. Gross applied to and was accepted by the art academy in Budapest and studied under the painter Béla Uitz, though within a year a new regime under Miklos Horthy took over and attempted to expel all Jews and foreigners from the country. After being deported from Hungary, Gross began art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, Austria shortly before immigrating to the United States in 1921. Gross's studies continued in the United States at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, where he studied with Elie Nadelman and others, and at the Art Students League of New York, with Robert Laurent. He also attended the Educational Alliance Art School, studying under Abbo Ostrowsky, at the same time as Moses Soyer and Peter Blume. In 1926 Gross began teaching at The Educational Alliance, and continued teaching there for the next 50 years. Louise Nevelson was among his students at the Alliance (in 1934), during the time she was transitioning from painting to sculpture. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he exhibited at the Salons of America exhibitions at the Anderson Galleries and, beginning in 1928, at the Whitney Studio Club. In 1929, Gross experimented with printmaking, and created an important group of 15 linocuts and lithographs of landscapes, New York City streets and parks, women in interiors, the circus, and vaudeville. The entire suite is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gross returned to the medium of printmaking in the 1960s, and produced approximately 200 works in the medium over the next two decades. For more than sixty years Chaim Gross's art has expressed optimistic, affirming themes, Judaica, balancing acrobats, cyclists, trapeze artists and mothers and children convey joyfulness, modernism, exuberance, love, and intimacy. This aspect of his work remained consistent with his Jewish Hasidic heritage, which teaches that only in his childlike happiness is man nearest to God. In March 1932 Gross had his first solo exhibition at Gallery 144 in New York City. For a short time they represented Gross, as well as his friends Milton Avery, Moses Soyer, Ahron Ben-Shmuel and others. Gross was primarily a practitioner of the direct carving method, with the majority of his work being carved from wood. Other direct carvers in early 20th-century American art include William Zorach, Jose de Creeft, and Robert Laurent. Works by Chaim Gross can be found in major museums and private collections throughout the United States, with substantial holdings (27 sculptures) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A key work from this era, now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is the 1932 birds-eye maple Acrobatic Performers, which is also only one and one quarter inch thick. In 1933 Gross joined the government's PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration), which Gross worked for later in the 1930s. Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures that were placed in schools and public colleges, made work for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the Exposition universelle de 1937 in Paris, and in 1942, with a purchase prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Artists for Victory" exhibition for his wood sculpture of famed circus performer Lillian Leitzel. In 1949 Gross sketched Chaim Weizmann, Israeli President, at several functions in New York City where Weizmann was speaking, Gross completed the bust in bronze later that year. Gross returned to Israel for three months in 1951 (the second of many trips there in the postwar years) to paint a series of 40 watercolors of life in various cities. This series was exhibited at the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) in 1953. He also did some important Hebrew medals. In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. At the end of the decade Gross was working primarily in bronze which allowed him to create open forms, large-scale works and of course, multiple casts. Gross's large-scale bronze The Family, donated to New York City in 1991 in honor of Mayor Ed Koch, and installed at the Bleecker Street Park at 11th street, is now a fixture of Greenwich Village. In 1959, a survey of Gross's sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibit Four American Expressionists curated by Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with work by Abraham Rattner, Doris Caesar, and Karl Knaths. In 1976, a selection from Gross's important collection of historic African sculpture, formed since the late 1930s, was exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum in the show The Sculptor's Eye: The African Art Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Chaim Gross. Gross was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1981. In 1984, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, with Jacob Lawrence and Lukas Foss. In the fall of 1991, Allen Ginsberg gave an important tribute to Gross at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is published in their Proceedings. In 1994, Forum Gallery, which now represents the Chaim Gross estate, held a memorial exhibition featuring a sixty-year survey of Gross's work.In March 1932 Gross had his first solo exhibition at Gallery 144 in New York City. For a short time they represented Gross, as well as his friends Milton Avery, Moses Soyer, Ahron Ben-Shmuel and others. Gross was primarily a practitioner of the direct carving method, with the majority of his work being carved from wood. Other direct carvers in early 20th-century American art include William Zorach, Jose de Creeft, and Robert Laurent. Works by Chaim Gross can be found in major museums and private collections throughout the United States, with substantial holdings (27 sculptures) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A key work from this era, now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is the 1932 birds-eye maple Acrobatic Performers, which is also only one and one quarter inch thick. In 1933 Gross joined the government's PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration), which Gross worked for later in the 1930s. Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures that were placed in schools and public colleges, made work for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the Exposition universelle de 1937 in Paris, and in 1942, with a purchase prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Artists for Victory" exhibition for his wood sculpture of famed circus performer Lillian Leitzel. In 1949 Gross sketched Chaim Weizmann, President of Israel, at several functions in New York City where Weizmann was speaking, Gross completed the bust in bronze later that year. Gross returned to Israel for three months in 1951 (the second of many trips there in the postwar years) to paint a series of 40 watercolors of life in various cities. This series was exhibited at the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) in 1953. In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. At the end of the decade Gross was working primarily in bronze which allowed him to create open forms, large-scale works and of course, multiple casts. Gross's large-scale bronze The Family, donated to New York City in 1991 in honor of Mayor Ed Koch, and installed at the Bleecker Street Park at 11th street, is now a fixture of Greenwich Village. In 1959, a survey of Gross's sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibit Four American Expressionists curated by Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with work by Abraham Rattner, Doris Caesar, and Karl Knaths. In 1976, a selection from Gross's important collection of historic African sculpture, formed since the late 1930s, was exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum in the show The Sculptor's Eye: The African Art Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Chaim Gross. Gross was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1981. In 1984, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, with Jacob Lawrence and Lukas Foss. In the fall of 1991, Allen Ginsberg gave an important tribute to Gross at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is published in their Proceedings. In 1994, Forum Gallery, which now represents the Chaim Gross estate, held a memorial exhibition featuring a sixty-year survey of Gross's work. Gross was a professor of printmaking and sculpture at both the Educational Alliance and the New School for Social Research in New York City, as well as at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the MoMA art school, the Art Student's League and the New Art School (which Gross ran briefly with Alexander Dobkin...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

Shtetl Interior, Cheyder
By Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan
Located in Surfside, FL
Pastel or Tempera on paper. Judaica Shtetl scene of village. Anatoli Lwowitch Kaplan was a Russian painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose works often reflect his Jewish origins. h...
Category

20th Century Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Pastel, Tempera

You May Also Like

Street Musicians by Ira Moskowitz original lithograph
By Ira Moskowitz
Located in Paonia, CO
Street Musicians by Ira Moskowitz shows four musicians playing various horn instruments including trumpets and trombones. Behind them some childre...
Category

20th Century Expressionist Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

KLEZMER MUSIC BAND, Painting, Acrylic on Canvas
By Leon Zernitsky
Located in Yardley, PA
I love klezmer music. The warm joy of klezmer music wraps around me like a hug, and i feel like hugging back by painting it. hope the viewers of my art will fill the same. All my ...
Category

2010s Contemporary Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

Fiddlers - II, Modern Ink on Paper by Ira Moskowitz
By Ira Moskowitz
Located in Long Island City, NY
Ira Moskowitz, Polish/American (1912 - 2001) - Fiddlers - II, Year: 1989, Medium: Ink on Paper, signed, Size: 13 in. x 10 in. (33.02 cm x 25.4 cm), Description: Holding the fiddles...
Category

1980s Modern Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink

Jewish Wedding - Handsigned lithograph /75 ex
By Walter Spitzer
Located in Paris, IDF
Walter SPITZER (1927-) Jewish Wedding Original lithograph Handsigned in pencil Numbered /75 ex On Japan paper 55 x 75 cm (c. 22 x 30 inch) Excellent ...
Category

Late 20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

Materials

Lithograph

Russian Musicians - Oil painting by L. M. Brailovsky - Early 20th Century
Located in Roma, IT
Russian Musicians is an original painting, realized by Leonid Mikhailovich Brailovsky in the Early XX century Oil painting on board. Hand-signed by the artist on the lower margin. I...
Category

Early 20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board

Fiddlers - I, Modern Ink on Paper by Ira Moskowitz
By Ira Moskowitz
Located in Long Island City, NY
Ira Moskowitz, Polish/American (1912 - 2001) - Fiddlers - I, Year: circa 1989, Medium: Ink on Paper, signed, Size: 13 in. x 10 in. (33.02 cm x 25.4 cm), Description: Ira Moskowitz'...
Category

1980s Modern Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Materials

Ink