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Todros Geller3 Jewish Men Judaica Woodblock Woodcut Engraving Print Chicago 1930s WPA Artist Circa Early to Mid 1900's
Circa Early to Mid 1900's
About the Item
Todros Geller (1889 – 1949) was a Jewish American artist and teacher best known as a master printmaker and a leading artist among Chicago’s art community.Geller was born in Vinnytsia, the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1889.[2] He studied art in Odessa and continued his studies after moving to Montreal in 1906 where he immigrated to Canada. He married and moved to Chicago in 1918, where he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago until 1923.
Geller produced paintings, woodcuts, woodcarvings, and etchings. His work focused on Jewish tradition, often including moralistic themes and social commentary, shtetl, ghetto life, and the intersection of Jewish tradition with modern-day Chicago. He regarded art as a tool for social reform and he spent a large part of his career teaching art. His work was commissioned for stained glass windows, bookplates, community centers and Yiddish and English books. He was regarded as a leader in the field of synagogue and religious art. He designed stained glass window for synagogues in Omaha, Fort Worth, Dayton, Stamford, and Chicago Heights. Over the course of his career he illustrated more than 40 books.
In addition to conducting classes in his studio, Geller was head of art at the Jewish People’s Institute (JPI), supervisor of art for the Board of Jewish Education and director of art for the College of Jewish Studies (which became the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership) and taught at Hull House. Many prominent Chicago artists studied drawing and painting under Geller. Geller was a source of inspiration to Aaron Bohrod and Mitchell Siporin, among others. Irene Gordon was also among his pupils.
In 1926, Geller formed what would become a lengthy working relationship with Chicago publisher and cultural activist L. M. Shteyn (a pseudonym for Yitshak Leyb Fradkin, anglicized as L.M. Stein in his English language correspondence). Shteyn and Geller shared a similar ideology, were both considered radical progressives, were part of the Chicago Jewish Left who worked to promote the Yiddish language and they both supported the Soviet Union for its commitment to the Yiddish language and to the Jewish settlement in Birobidzhan. Shteyn's Yiddish press, the L. M. Shteyn Farlag, published at least eight monographs illustrated by Geller and four art albums dedicated to his work.
Geller was one of the founding members of "Around the Palette" in Chicago in 1926, a club where artists shared their personal views of art and its role in society. The club became the "American Jewish Art Club", in 1940 and subsequently the "American Jewish Artists Club" in the early 1990s. Other founding members included Emil Armin, David Bekker, Aaron Bohrod, Fritzi Brod, Samuel Greenburg, William S. Schwartz, Maurice Yochim and Louise Dunn Yochim.
In 1929, Geller visited Palestine, where he was inspired to paint Biblical themes such as his painting Jerusalem the Old which was included in the catalogue of the Art Institute of Chicago's thirty-third annual exhibition. He also created a woodcut series entitled Seven Palestinian motifs cut on wood in 1930.
He was the most prominent of the 14 graphic artists who participated in A Gift to Birobidzhan in 1937, an album of 14 woodcuts produced as a fund-raising project for the Chicago ICOR (whose acronym comes from the Yiddish name for the Association for Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union) to support the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Geller's contribution to the portfolio was a woodcut based on Raisins and Almonds, the Yiddish lullaby written by Abraham Goldfaden in 1880 for his operetta Shulamis. The other artists who contributed woodcuts were Alex Topchevsky, William Jacobs, Aaron Bohrod, David Bekker, Louis Weiner, Mitchell Siporin, Edward Millman, Fritzi Brod, Bernece Berkman, Morris Topchevsky, Abraham Weiner, Raymond Katz, and Ceil Rosenberg.
In 1937, Shteyn published a volume of about sixty woodcuts by Geller called From Land to Land, produced as part of the Federal Art Project (FAP), the visual arts arm of the Great Depression-era New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal One program in the United States. The cover featured a goat on the shore of Lake Michigan with Chicago’s skyline in the background. As an important staple of Jewish life in Eastern Europe that were believed to have mystical qualities, goats were a dominant symbol in Geller’s artistic vocabulary. The woodcuts, four of which were in color, illustrated Jewish life, in addition to Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Midwestern American themes.
Geller painted The Accordion Player in 1938 as part of the WPA Federal Art Project, an oil painting in the collection of the MacNider Art Museum in Mason City, Iowa. The WPA supported South Side Community Art Center opened in 1940 providing free art lessons for the community. Geller was a member of the interracial faculty of art instructors that included local black artists such as Charles Davis, Charles White, Bernard Goss, William Carter and local white artists such as Morris Topchevsky, Si Gordon and Max Kahn.
Geller became the first president of the American Jewish Arts Club following its formation in Chicago in 1940.
Hassidic (1927)
In 1942, Geller provided woodcut-illustrations for Jewish dancing master Nathan Vizonsky's book Ten Jewish Folk Dances: A Manual for Teachers and Leaders published by the American-Hebrew Theatrical League in Chicago.
Awards
Geller's woodcuts won three Library of Congress National Print Exhibition awards.[2][4]
The Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago has a collection of papers documenting Geller's career. The archive includes photographs, sketchbooks, original artwork, commissions for stained glass windows, various manuscript material including typescripts of articles, papers relating to the American Artists' Congress, 1937–1938, and correspondence with art organizations and artists such as Alexander Raymond Katz, Beatrice Levy, Archibald Motley, Increase Robinson, and Carl Zigrosser The papers cover his efforts to establish a Jewish museum in Chicago in 1928, involvement with the WPA Federal Art Project, participation in Artists Equity and the American Federation of Arts, his work teaching art to the Jewish community and his efforts to improve the working conditions and visibility of Jewish artists.
- Creator:Todros Geller (1889 - 1949, Ukrainian)
- Creation Year:Circa Early to Mid 1900's
- Dimensions:Height: 17 in (43.18 cm)Width: 13 in (33.02 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Minor wear commensurate with age. Measurements include frame.
- Gallery Location:Surfside, FL
- Reference Number:
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