Issachar Ber Ryback, 1897-1935

The sheet is slightly yellowed with some light wear to the corners and edges. There are a few spots of foxing to the top edge. Mounted within a carved wooden frame and under glass. Unexamined out of frame.
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This work was most probably executed in 1922, and is a sheet from Ryback's series of illustrations for the Yiddish book Mayselekh far Kleyninke Kinderlekh (Little Tales for Little Children) published in Berlin. Authored by Miriyam Margolin a prominent figure of Jewish education, this book was one of three books of fairytales which Ryback illustrated in the early 1920s.

In 1921 Ryback spent some time in Berlin where critics and collectors began to appreciate his importance to the Russian Avant Garde movement. It was here he published his renowned book of lithographs of the Shtetl. By 1921-22 his cubism was already less pure or analytic. In essence his cubism of the 1920s is used as a language with which to construct his largely nostalgic subjects, albeit with great force and poignancy. The present work is typical of the folkloristic works with Jewish subject matter Ryback executed in the second and third decades of the twentieth century.

At this time, a small group of artists attempted to express Jewish subjects using the most advanced theories of the time. They produced paintings in the naive style depicting synagogues, Jewish customs, character portraits, designs for the Yiddish and Hebrew theatre and illustrations of religious texts. Ryback,  together with Chagall and Lissitsky, was among the most prominent figures of this group in Russia, all of whom tried to render traditional Jewish religious subjects using modernist or even anarchistic forms. Edouard Roditi describes Ryback's importance during this period as follows: `The most important contributor to the Jewish Art Movement in Russia was Issachar Ryback who may yet be generally recognised as an artist whose genius, in this field, bears comparison only with that of Marc Chagall.' (quoted in Cecil Roth, Jewish Art, London, 1971, p.288)