1920 Facsimile JEWISH YIDDISH Russian AVANT GARDE Ryback CHAIKOV Berlewi BOOK

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1920 Facsimile JEWISH YIDDISH Russian AVANT GARDE Ryback CHAIKOV Berlewi BOOK:
$175.00

DESCRIPTION : Up for sale is a RARE publication. It\'s a LIMITED and NUMBERED ( Only 350 numbered copies ) Facsimile edition of the YIDDISH AVANT GARDE magazine ALBATROS , A literaly magazine-Journal for POETRY and GRAPHIC ART which was published in Warsaw Poland in the early 1920\'s by URI ZVI GRINBERG . The unique facsimile publication was published in 1977 By The Israel National Library. In addition to the MODERN Jewish-Yidish poetry pieces. The magazine was illustrated by the most important JEWISH RUSSIAN AVANT GARDE and KULTURE LIGE artists such as YISSACHAR BER RYBACK and JOSEF CHAIKOV and also JEWISH POLISH AVANT GARDE artists such as HENRYK BERLEWI. A few designs and illustrationsare printed with the text and others are printed on chromo and tipped in the book. A treasure of Jewish - Yiddish culture, literature and art. This copy is numbered 201/350. Original cloth HC. Embossed Avant Garde heading. 10\" x 14\" . 3 magazines. 70 pp. Excellent pristine condition. Perfectly clean and tightly bound. Practicaly unused .
( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) Book will be sent inside a protective envelope . PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal .SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via expedited insured trackableregistered airmail is $18 . Book will be sent inside a protective envelope . Will be sent within3-5 days after payment . Kindly note that duration of Int\'l registered airmail is around 10 days.

The Yiddish Book Collection of the Russian Avant-Garde contains books published between the years 1912-1928 by many of the movement’s best known artists. The items here represent only a portion of Yale\'s holdings in Yiddish literature. The Beinecke, in collaboration with the Yale University library Judaica Collection, continues to digitize and make Yiddish books available online. With the Russian Revolution of 1917, prohibitions on Yiddish printing imposed by the Czarist regime were lifted. Thus, the early post-revolutionary period saw a major flourishing of Yiddish books and journals. The new freedoms also enabled the development of a new and radically modern art by the Russian avant-garde. Artists such as Mark Chagall, Joseph Chaikov, Issachar Ber Ryback, El (Eliezer) Lisitzsky and others found in the freewheeling artistic climate of those years an opportunity Jews had never enjoyed before in Russia: an opportunity to express themselves as both Modernists and as Jews. Their art often focused on the small towns of Russia and Ukraine where most of them had originated. Their depiction of that milieu, however, was new and different. Jewish art in the early post-revolutionary years emerged with the creation of a secular, socialist culture and was especially cultivated by the Kultur-Lige, the Jewish social and cultural organizations of the 1920s and 1930s. One of the founders of the first Kultur-Lige in Kiev in 1918 was Joseph Chaikov, a painter and sculptor whose books are represented in the Beinecke’s collection. The Kultur-Lige supported education for children and adults in Jewish literature, the theater and the arts. The organization sponsored art exhibitions and art classes and also published books written by the Yiddish language’s most accomplished authors and poets and illustrated by artists who in time became trail blazers in modernist circles. This brief flowering of Yiddish secular culture in Russia came to an end in the 1920s. As the power of the Soviet state grew under Stalin, official culture became hostile to the experimental art that the revolution had at first facilitated and even encouraged. Many artists left for Berlin, Paris and other intellectual centers. Those that remained, like El Lisitzky, ceased creating art with Jewish themes and focused their work on furthering the aims of Communism. Tragically, many of them perished in Stalin’s murderous purges. The Artists Eliezer Lisitzky (1890–1941), better known as El Lisitzky, was a Russian Jewish artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer, and architect. He was one of the most important figures of the Russian avant-garde, helping develop Suprematism with his friend and mentor, Kazimir Malevich. He began his career illustrating Yiddish children\'s books in an effort to promote Jewish culture. In 1921, he became the Russian cultural ambassador in Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus movement. He brought significant innovation and change to the fields of typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim. However, as he grew more involved with creating art work for the Soviet state, he ceased creating art with Jewish themes. Among the best known Yiddish books illustrated by the artist is Sikhes Hulin by the writer and poet Moshe Broderzon and Yingel Tsingle Khvat, a children’s book of poetry by Mani Leyb. Both works have been completely digitized and can be found here. Joseph Chaikov (1888-1979) was a Russian sculptor, graphic artist, teacher, and art critic. Born in Kiev, Chaikov studied in Paris from 1910 to 1913. Returning to Russia in 1914, he became active in Jewish art circles and in 1918 was one of the founders of the Kultur-Lige in Kiev. Though primarily known as a sculptor, in his early career, he also illustrated Yiddish books, many of them children’s books. In 1921 his Yiddish book, Skulptur was published. In it, the artist formulated an avant-garde approach to sculpture and its place in a new Jewish art. It too is in the Beinecke collection. Another of the great artists from this remarkable period in Yiddish cultural history is Issachar Ber Ryback. Together with Lisistzky, he traveled as a young man in the Russian countryside studying Jewish folk life and art. Their findings made a deep impression on both men as artists and as Jews and folk art remained an aoffering influence on their work. One of Ryback’s better known works is Shtetl, Mayn Khoyever heym; a gedenknish (Shtetl, My destroyed home; A Remembrance), Berlin, 1922. In this book, also in the Beinecke collection, the artist depicts scenes of Jewish life in his shtetl (village) in Ukraine before it was destroyed in the pogroms which followed the end of World War I. Indeed, Shtetl is an elegy to that world. David Hofstein’s book of poems, Troyer (Tears), illustrated by Mark Chagall also mourns the victims of the pogroms. It was published by the Kultur-Lige in Kiev in 1922. Chagall’s art in this book is stark and minimalist in keeping with the grim subject of the poetry. Chagall was a leading force in the new emerging Yiddish secular art and many of the young modernist artists of the time came to study and paint with him in Vitebsk, his hometown. Lisistzky and Ryback were among them. Chagall, however, parted ways with them when their artistic styles and goals diverged. Chagall moved to Moscow in 1920 where he became involved with the newly created and innovative Moscow Yiddish Theater. Cite as: General Modern Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University More than most artists, Henryk Berlewi resists easy categorisation. He was active for six decades as a painter, graphic designer and theorist of art and design, but above all he was a restless innovator, active in many fields, experimenting with radically different styles, and switching between Jewish and non-Jewish artistic circles with apparent ease. Today he is mostly remembered as an abstract artist, who paved the way for later trends like optical art. All but forgotten is his impressive contribution to Yiddish book design and Yiddish typography in the early 1920s. This work, although limited to a small number of items, is of outstanding quality and represents one of the high points of Polish Yiddish modernism.Berlewi was born in Warsaw in 1894 into an assimilated Polish Jewish family. As a teenager he studied art in Warsaw, Antwerp (1909 -10) and Paris (1911 - 12), then returned to Poland in 1913 and for a few years was mainly active in Polish art circles. However, in the period 1918 – 22 Berlewi returned to Jewish themes and was a well-known and popular figure in Yiddish literary, artistic and theatrical circles. (3) A fluent draughtsman, his sketchbooks from these years are filled with finely executed portraits of Jewish workers and the many Jewish writers, artists and folklorists who made Warsaw such a thriving centre of Jewish cultural life. At the same time he became the artistic standard-bearer of the group known as Di Khalyastre [The Gang], the group of Yiddish expressionist writers led by Uri-Tsvi Grinberg, Perets Markish and Meylekh Ravitsh. Berlewi’s brand of Jewish expressionist art and in particular his radical experiments with Yiddish typography are the perfect counterpart to the angry, elemental and fragmented language of the Khalyastre poets in this short-lived outburst of Yiddish ‘revolutionary excitement’. (4) His flowing draughtsmanship is evident in the cover drawing for Sh. Londinski’s poetry collection Flamen (Flames) of 1920. A buxom Venus rises naked from the waves, her full-length tresses falling in shimmering ripples behind her against an Art Deco sunburst. With its wholesome eroticism and fluent curves, the effect is reminiscent of another draughtsman-typographer, the English artist Eric Gill. But Berlewi reserved his most striking and avant-garde Yiddish graphics for his collaborations with the leading Khalyastre poets Markish and Grinberg in the early ‘20s. For the cover of Markish’s poem Di Kupe (The Heap), published in 1921, Berlewi devised a striking gold-on-black composition in which the massive stone-like blocks of the title letters rise organically and almost imperceptibly out of a stylised landscape of mountain peaks. Equally imaginative and even more abstract is Berlewi’s extraordinary design for the cover of Markish’s Radyo (Radio). Here the Yiddish letters of the title have mutated into radio waves, lightning flashes of jagged and fractured forms which are almost unrecognisable as individual letters. And in somewhat more figurative vein, for Grinberg’s Mefisto (Mephistopheles) Berlewi produced a cover illustration combining his trademark geometric Yiddish lettering and a portrait of Grinberg smoking a pipe. 1921 marked the beginning of Berlewi’s acquaintance with the pioneering avant-garde artist, illustrator and typographer El Lissitsky, a formative influence on the younger man. Berlewi moved to Berlin in 1922, and devoted much of his time to developing an all-encompassing theory of abstract art and design which he called ‘mechano-faktura’. However he made one final and highly influential contribution to Jewish expressionism in his graphic work for the Yiddish journal Albatros (Albatross) from 1922 - 23. Published in four issues in Warsaw and Berlin, under the editorship of Uri Tsvi Grinberg, the journal has been described by one historian as “a milestone in the integration of poetic, essayistic, graphic and typographic values”. (5)From 1928 until the late 1930s, Berlewi spent most of his time in Paris and Belgium. He returned to figurative art, was active in scenic design, and produced portraits of prominent political and literary figures. During the Second World War Berlewi joined the French resistance, and only returned to painting in 1947. A slow and deliberate painter, Berlewi now produced still lives in the painstaking, almost trompe l’oeil style of the Old Masters. He died in Paris in 1967. A number of important paintings and drawings by Berlewi came to light recently at the sale of the personal collection of a good friend of the artist, the Yiddish writer and painter Mendel Mann. Among the sketches several portraits of Yiddish cultural figures stood out - the singer, writer, photographer and folklorist Menakhem Kipnis (1878 – 1942), the painter Maurycy Minkovski (1881 - 1930), and the writer Yosef Opatoshu (1886 – 1954). Also included was a cartoon by Berlewi which provides an insider’s satirical view of perhaps the defining moment in the cultural life of post-WW1 Yiddish Warsaw, the sensational success enjoyed by the Vilna Troupe’s production of Ansky’s mystical drama Tsvishn tsvey veltn, oder der dibek (Between Two Worlds, or The Dybbuk. (6)Berlewi had been closely involved with the genesis of the Vilna Troupe’s production. He was among a small group of actors, writers and theatre folk who listened to Ansky giving one of his first readings of the play in Warsaw, in the hall of the Yiddish Writers Club. (7) It was more than likely that he was also among the large crowd who came to mourn Ansky following his death on 8 November 1920 and heard Mordecai Mazo, the director of the Vilna Troupe, make a public promise to stage the play by the end of the traditional thirty-day period of mourning. Berlewi was the artistic advisor to the company as it worked round the clock to make good on Mazo’s pledge, bringing up the curtain at Warsaw’s Elysium Theatre on the opening night of 9 December 1920. Indeed, Berlewi was also responsible for the production’s defining public image, a highly stylised black and white portrait of the ill-fated lovers Khonen and Leye, which was used both on the poster and the programme. In Berlewi’s cartoon, a large cow labelled Dybbuk stands with its legs wide apart. Underneath the cow are a group of actors in costume; four of them are drinking milk direct from the cow’s teats while the fifth directs a jet of milk into a bucket. Under the group is the caption Di vilner trupe (The Vilna Troupe), and several of the figures are clearly recognisable as characters from the play, particularly the young lovers Khonen and Leye. The cow has a crooked smile and a nasty glint in its eye and has turned its head to stare at the sixth figure in the picture. This downcast man sitting by himself in the corner is the only figure Berlewi identifies by name - the director of the Vilna Troupe’s 1920 premiere of Ansky’s play, Dovid Herman.Let us note at this point that Berlewi’s design parodies and pays homage to one of the great works of classical antiquity: the Etruscan bronze sculpture known as Lupa Capitolina, the she-wolf that protected and suckled Romulus and Remus, the twins who legend has it founded the city of Rome. The Vilna Troupe’s actors greedily crane their heads upwards to fill their mouths with milk in an almost identical pose to the chubby twins in the famous Roman landmark. (8) Berlewi’s original sketch is undated and lacks a caption; fortunately however both are included in a reproduction of the cartoon in an obscure volume of memoirs published several decades later by the Polish Yiddish journalist Ber Kutsher. This gives a date of 1921, a title - A melkndike ku (A Milking Cow) - and a caption, as spoken by Dovid Herman: “Tsugegreyt zey a ku….s’rint in di piskes…..nu, un ikh?” (“I got them a cow….the milk’s pouring into their mouths…but what about me?”) What is not yet clear is exactly what prompted Berlewi’s jaundiced reaction to the runaway success of the Dybbuk and also perhaps to the mania for mysticism and the Dybbuk craze which the production set off. That the production was a smash-hit is undeniable - according to one account, the company gave 390 performances of the play in its first year to an estimated 200,000 theatregoers and the play itself took Jewish Poland by storm. (9) Many observers believed that much of the premiere production’s extraordinary appeal was due to the conception of its director Dovid Herman, who was brought in to inject into the production some of the atmosphere of his own traditional Hasidic background. It is more than likely that Berlewi produced his cartoon in response to a particular episode or set of circumstances. Perhaps the original contract was drawn up in such a way that Herman failed to reap his share of the profits from the play’s unforeseen success? It is also possible that the cartoon was itself a commission from one of the many Yiddish newspapers, cultural journals or satirical magazines of the time. Romulus and Remus fell out and the Vilna Troupe was also to suffer inner discord and undergo several metamorphoses. But even without knowing all the circumstances behind its creation, we can enjoy the sense of mischief and the artistic skill manifest in Berlewi’s Dybbuk milkcow, and feel thankful that this most ephemeral of sketches has resurfaced after so many years. C. YIDDISH BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY BERLEWI -- A PRELIMINARY CHECKLIST This list is based on information from various sources, including library listings and booksellers’ catalogues. It is almost certainly far from being comprehensive. Further contributions to this and future bibliographic listings would be welcomed and acknowledged in any future published versions. Akerman, Rivke, Poemen un lider fun payn. Paris, 1957, 96 pp. Grinberg, Uri-Tsvi [Greenberg, Uri Zvi]. Mefisto, Warsaw: Literatur-fond baym fareyn fun yidishe literatn un zhurnalistn in varshe, 1922, 85 pp.Hagay, Berele, A bisl rekhiles: vegn shrayber, kinstler, un shimi-tentser, Warsaw: 1926, 15 pp. (not seen).Kope, Rivke, Toy fun shtilkeyt: lider, 1946-1950, Paris: Oyfsnay, 1951, 91 pp.Kutsher, B., Geven amol varshe, zikhrones, Paris: Kultur-opteylung fun der dzhoynt in frankraykh, 1955, 331pp. (In addition to the cover graphic, this includes reproductions of Berlewi’s portrait sketches of Kutsher, Boez Karlinski, Alter Katsizne, Hilel Tseytlin, Shloyme-Leyb Kave, Dovid Herman, Zusman Segalovitsh, Yoysef Tunkel, Berlewi himself, Itshe-Meyer Vaysnberg, Efroym Kaganovitsh, Maurycy Minkovski (wrongly attributed to Feliks Frydman), and Aleksander Farbo. Berlewi’s ‘Dibek’ [Dybbuk] cartoon is reproduced on page 143.) Londinski, Sh. Y., Flamen, Warsaw: Di tsayt, 1920, 115 pp.Markish, Perets, Di kupe, Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1921, 32 pp. Edition: 1500Markish, Perets, Radyo, Warsaw: Ambasador, 1922, 46 pp.Segalovitsh, Z, Kaprizen: lider, Warsaw: Literatur-fond baym fareyn fun yidishe literatn un zhurnalistn in varshe, 1921, 235 pp.Segalovitsh, Z, Tsaytike troybn, Warsaw: A. Gitlin, [1920?], 36 pp. (not seen). Zak, Avrom, In onheyb fun a friling: kapitlekh zikhroynes, Buenos Aires: Tsentral farband fun poylishe yidn in argentine, 1962, 329 pp. (not seen).Periodicals: Albatros, Warsaw + Berlin: 1922 – 23, nos 1-4.Khalyastre, vol 1, Warsaw: 1922Ringen, Warsaw: Kultur-lige, 1921- 1922Publisher’s logo:The logo used by the Warsaw publisher Di tsayt, signed h.b., is almost certainly by Berlewi, but this requires further research. See F. Bimko, Fun krig un fun friden, Warsaw: Di Tsayt, 1921. Uri Zvi Grinberg (Hebrew: אורי צבי גרינברג‎, 22 September 1896 – 8 May 1981) was an acclaimed Israeli poet and journalist who wrote in Yiddish and Hebrew.[1]Uri Zvi Grinberg was born in Bialikamin, Galicia, then Austria-Hungary, into a prominent Hasidic family. He was raised in Lemberg (Lviv). Some of his poems in Yiddish and Hebrew were published before he was 20.[2] In 1915 he was drafted into the army and fought in the First World War. After returning to Lemberg, he was witness to the pogroms of November 1918.[3] Grinberg and his family miraculously escaped being shot by Polish soldiers, an experience which convinced him that all Jews living in the \"Kingdom of the Cross” faced physical annihilation.[4]Grinberg moved to Warsaw, where he wrote for the Yiddish newspaper Moment. After a brief stay in Berlin,[5] he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine (the Land of Israel) in 1923. Grinberg was in Poland when the Second World War erupted in 1939, but managed to escape.In 1950, Grinberg married Aliza, with whom he had two daughters and three sons.[1] He added \"Tur-Malka\" to the family name, but continued to use \"Grinberg\" to honor family members who perished in the Holocaust.[6]Literary careerHis first works in Hebrew and Yiddish were published in 1912. His first book, in Yiddish, was published in Lwow while he was fighting on the Serbian front. In 1921, Grinberg moved to Warsaw, with its lively Jewish cultural scene. He was one of the founders of the Chaliastra (literally, the \"gang\"), a group of young Yiddish writers that included Melekh Ravitch. He also edited a Yiddish literary journal, Albatros.[7] In the wake of his iconoclastic depictions of Jesus in the second issue of Albatros, particularly his prose poem Royte epl fun veybeymer (Red Apples from the Trees of Pain), the journal was banned by the Polish censors and Grinberg fled to Berlin to escape prosecution in November 1922.[8] The magazine incorporated avant-garde elements both in content and typography, taking its cue from German periodicals like Die Aktion and Der Sturm.[9] Grinberg published the last two issues of Albatros in Berlin before renouncing European society and immigrating to Palestine in December 1923.[10]In his early days in Palestine, Grinberg wrote for Davar, one of the main newspapers of the Labour Zionist movement. In his poems and articles he warned of the fate in store for the Jews of the Diaspora. After the Holocaust, he mourned the fact that his terrible prophecies had come true. His works represent a synthesis of traditional Jewish values and an individualistic lyrical approach to life and its problems. They draw on Jewish sources such as the Bible, the Talmud and the prayer book, but are also influenced by European literature.[11]Literary motifsIn the second and third issues of Albatros, Grinberg invokes pain as a key marker of the modern era. This theme is illustrated in Royte epl fun vey beymer and Veytikn-heym af slavisher erd (Pain-Home on Slavic Ground).[12]Political activismIn 1930, Grinberg joined the Revisionist camp, representing the Revisionist movement at several Zionist congresses and in Poland. After the 1929 Hebron massacre he became more militant. With Abba Ahimeir and Joshua Yeivin, he founded Brit HaBirionim, a clandestine faction of the Revisionist movement which adopted an activist policy of violating British mandatory regulations. In the early 1930s, its members disrupted a British-sponsored census, sounded the shofar in prayer at the Western Wall despite a British prohibition, held a protest rally when a British colonial official visited Tel Aviv, and tore down Nazi Flags from German offices in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.[13] When the British arrested hundreds of its members the organization effectively ceased to exist.He believed that the Holocaust was a \'tragic but almost inevitable outcome of Jewish indifference to their destiny.\' As early as 1923, \"Grinberg envisioned and warned of the destruction of European Jewry.\"[14]Following Israeli independence in 1948, he joined Menachem Begin\'s Herut movement. In 1949, he was elected to the first Knesset. He lost his seat in the 1951 elections. After the Six-Day War he joined the Movement for Greater Israel, which advocated Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.Awards In 1947, 1954 and 1977, Grinberg was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature.[15] In 1957, Grinberg was awarded the Israel Prize for his contribution to literature.[16] In 1976, the Knesset held a special session in honor of his eightieth birthday.[17] Published works (in Hebrew) A Great Fear and the Moon (poetry), Hedim, 1925 (Eymah Gedolah Ve-Yareah) Manhood on the Rise (poetry), Sadan, 1926 (Ha-Gavrut Ha-Olah) A Vision of One of the Legions (poetry), Sadan, 1928 (Hazon Ehad Ha-Legionot) Anacreon at the Pole of Sorrow (poetry), Davar, 1928 (Anacreon Al Kotev Ha-Itzavon) House Dog (poetry), Hedim, 1929 (Kelev Bayit) A Zone of Defense and Address of the Son-of-blood (poetry), Sadan, 1929 (Ezor Magen Ve-Ne`um Ben Ha-Dam) The Book of Indictment and Faith (poetry), Sadan, 1937 (Sefer Ha-Kitrug Ve-Ha-Emunah) From the Ruddy and the Blue (poetry), Schocken, 1950 (Min Ha-Kahlil U-Min Ha-Kahol) Streets of the River (poetry), Schocken, 1951 (Rehovot Ha-Nahar) In the Middle of the World, In the Middle of Time (poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1979 (Be-Emtza Ha-Olam, Be-Emtza Ha-Zmanim) Selected Poems (poetry), Schocken, 1979 (Mivhar Shirim) Complete Works of Uri Zvi Greenberg, Bialik Institute, 1991 (Col Kitvei) At the Hub, Bialik Institute, 2007 (Baavi Ha-Shir)