The Graphic Work of Issachar Ber Ryback (1897–1935): an OUTSTANDING Example of Children’S Book Art

the Graphic Work of Issachar Ber Ryback (1897–1935): AN OUTSTANDING Example of Children’s Book Art

Serge-Aljosja Stommels and Albert Lemmens

At the beginning of the twentieth century in Russia a modernist Jewish national style in art was achieved by artists of the Kultur Lige, when her- itage and tradition were combined with modernist art trends. Children were the main focus of this development; the new national identity was taught in educational programmes. Old and new tales were collected and written down by Jewish authors. Several were illustrated by Jew- ish artists such as Marc Chagall (1887–1985), El Lissitzky (1890–1941) and Issachar Ber Ryback (1897–1935). While the first two are more famous, the latter artist should not be overlooked in this respect. This paper will show Ryback’s role in the development of Jewish- Russian art in general and illustrations for children’s books in particu- lar as well as the importance of these illustrations within the œuvre of Ryback. In the first part the life and works of the artist will be described. The second part focuses on the nine children’s books for which he created illustrations.

Life and Work

Issachar Ber Ryback was born on February 2, 1897.1 His birth- place was Yelisavetgrad (nowadays Kirovohrad),2 in the government

1 for general biographical information the following sources were used: Raymond Cogniat, J. Ryback (Paris: Edition de l’Amitié Francaise, 1934); A. Tscherikower (ed.), Yis- sakhar Ber Ribak: zayn lebn un shafn (Paris: Komitet tsu fareybikn dem ondenk fun Yissakhar- Ber Ribak, 1937); I. Ryback 1897–1935. [Announcement leaflet for:] I. Ryback (His life and work) (London: Heinemann, s.a. [c.1937]); Dmitri Ia. Severiukhin, Oleg L. Leikind, Khudozhniki russkoi emigratsii2 (1917–1941). Biograficheskii slovar’ (St Petersburg: Cherny- sheva, 1994), pp. 402–404; Oleg L. Leikind, Kiril V. Makhrov, Dmitri Ia. Severiukhin, Khudozhniki russkogo zarubezh’ia. Biograficheskii slovar’ (St Petersburg: Notabene, 1999), pp. 505–506; ‘Biography’, on: http://www.comite-ryback.org/Biography.php, the official website of the Issachar Ber Ryback Committee & Foundation established in Israel in 2007. N.B. The single source for the date of birth is the biographical sketch by the Issachar Ber Ryback Committee & Foundation. Other sources only state the year of birth. 2 founded as a fortress in 1754, it was named Yelisavetgrad for Empress Elizabeth 280 serge-aljosja stommels and albert lemmens of Kherson. It was located in the South part of the Pale, the con- fined area of the Russian empire where Jews were allowed to live.3 His father, from an important Chassid family, was a follower of the Haska- lah movement4 and an admirer of Russian culture. At the age of ten Ryback was sent to the local ‘heder’, the Jewish school for children. Rather than being occupied with regular Jewish teachings he mainly gave his attention, in secret, to the evening drawing classes for local factory workers taught by Kosachinsky.5 In 1911, at the age of four- teen, he went to study at the Faculty of Painting of the Kiev School of Arts, from which he graduated in 1916. During this period Ryback joined the faculty’s informal group of young artists seeking a modern Jewish culture. Among its members were Boris Aronson (1900–1980), Alexander Tyshler (1898–1980), Solomon Nikritin (1898–1965), Mark Epstein (1897–1949), and Isaac Rabinovich (1894–1961), all of whom would, like Ryback, become well known as painters, graphic artists, scenic designers or sculptors in the first half of the twentieth century. As well as being involved with the search for a Jewish national identity he was also very interested in new developments in art. In 1913–1914 he attended classes in the private studio of the avant-garde artist Alex- andra Exter (1882–1949). There he encountered the art of Picasso and Braque. The following year Ryback for the first time participated in an exhibition in which he showed paintings with avant-garde influences. At the Kiev Spring exhibition of 1915 the paintings he showed in fact bore witness to a combination of both interests: although modernist in style their content was inspired by life in the shtetl.

Between 1881 and 1919 it was the scene of several pogroms. It was renamed Zinov’evsk in 1924, Kirovo in 1936, and Kirovograd (Kirovohrad) in 1939. (from The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed., 2008, on: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1- Kirovohr.html). 3 The Jewish Pale of Settlement was the confined part of the Russian empire where Jews were allowed to live after having been expelled from the empire by laws of 1795 and 1835. Its region stretched from the Western border with Europe to the cities of Pskov, Smolensk, Kursk, and Kharkov and included Russian Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. See the map in Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (New York: YIVO Institute, 1988), p. 3. For a short discussion of its history, ibid., pp. XI–XV. 4 followers of the Haskalah movement (called Maskilim) abandoned the exclusive- ness of Jewish culture and sought to acquire the knowledge, manners, and aspirations of the nations among whom they dwelt. See: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/ view.jsp?artid=350&letter=H. 5 adolph Behne, in: Austellung J. Ryback, exhibition catalogue (Berlin: [Twardy], 1923), unpaginated; Bruno W. Reimann, ‘Issachar Ryback’, Menorah. Illustrierte Monatsschrift für die Jüdische Familie, vol. II, no. 6 ( June 1924), 15.