1929 Jewish YIDDISH CHILDREN BOOK Illust RUSSIAN TODROS GELLER Avant Garde ART

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1929 Jewish YIDDISH CHILDREN BOOK Illust RUSSIAN TODROS GELLER Avant Garde ART:
$85.00

DESCRIPTION : This VERY RARE and ILLUSTRATED Jewish YIDDISH CHILDREN SONG BOOK which was written by Mattes Lune was published in 1929 ( Fully dated ) in LA CALIFORNIA - USA By \"PALME\" Farlag . Beautifuly illustrated by TODROS GELLER whose Russian origin reflects clearly in his illustrations which strongly ressembles those of the Jewish Russian Avant Garde , An artistic movement which flourished at the same year in Russia and Poland ( Names and publishers like Kultur Lige , \"Groupfor Jewish National Aesthetics\" in Moscow , EL LISSITZKY , JOSEPH CHAIKOV , MARC CHAGALL , BORIS ARONSON , NATHAN ALTMAN YISSACHAR BER RYBACK , KULTUR LIGE artists and others ) . Original ILLUSTRATED cloth HC .YIDDISH text. . 9 x 6\" . 96 pp. Very good condition. Used. Clean. Tightly bound. Cover somewhat worn. Quite nicely preserved copy. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) . Will be sent in a protective rigid sealed packaging.

AUTHENTICITY : This is anORIGINALvintage1929 book ( Dated ) , NOT a reproduction or a reprint ,Itholds alife long GUARANTEE forits AUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.

PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal .SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail is$10 . Book will be sent inside a protective envelope . Handling within 3-5 days after payment. Estimated Int\'l duration around 14 days.

Todros Geller (1 July 1889 – 23 February 1949) was a Jewish American artist and teacher best known as a master printmaker and a leading artist among Chicago’s art community.[2]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.[4] He married and moved to Chicago in 1918, where he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago until 1923.[4]Career Geller produced paintings, woodcuts, woodcarvings, and etchings.[5] 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.[6][7] He regarded art as a tool for social reform and he spent a large part of his career teaching art.[8] His work was commissioned for stained glass windows, bookplates, community centers and Yiddish and English books.[6] He was regarded as a leader in the field of synagogue and religious art.[5] He designed stained glass windows for synagogues in Omaha, Fort Worth, Dayton, Stamford, and Chicago Heights.[9] Over the course of his career he illustrated more than 40 books.[8] Teaching art In addition to conducting classes in his studio,[2] Geller was head of art at the Jewish People’s Institute (JPI),[7] supervisor of art for the Board of Jewish Education[10] and director of art for the College of Jewish Studies (which became the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership)[10][11] and taught at Hull House.[12] Many prominent Chicago artists studied drawing and painting under Geller.[2] Geller was a source of inspiration to Aaron Bohrod and Mitchell Siporin, among others.[2]The L. M. Shteyn FarlagIn 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).[6][8] 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 Biroofferzhan.[8] 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.[6]Art and activismIn 1923, the Chicago Hebrew Institute\'s Observer (a forerunner of today\'s Jewish Community Center\'s[13]), included Geller as one of the \"many well known artists\" to have their works listed in an art exhibit catalogue.[14]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.[5][15] Other founding members included Emil Armin, David Bekker, Aaron Bohrod, Fritz Brod, Samuel Greenburg, William S. Schwartz, Maurice Yochim and Louise Dunn Yochim.[15]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.[4] He also created a woodcut series entitled Seven Palestinian motifs cut on wood in 1930.[16][17][18]In 1931, Geller provided illustrations for Rose G Lurie\'s book, The Great March: Post Biblical Jewish Stories, a selection of Jewish stories for children covering the period from the destruction of the First Temple to the expulsion from Spain.[19][20] The book was published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and was intended to cultivate \"a love for Jewish heroes, for the Jewish people, and for Jewish idealism.\"[20] John Drury, in his 1931 review of the Cafe Royale, \"an intellectual and artistic rendezvous of the west side Jewish quarter\", for his book Dining in Chicago, included \"Todros Geller, the wood-block artist\" as one of the \"local Jewish celebrities in the arts and allied interests\" who dined there.[21]In 1932, Geller participated in the Grant Park Art Fair[4] organized by Adeline Loebdell Atwater, Chicago\'s first open-air art fair.[9]According to Sarah Abrevaya Stein, professor of history and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA, inexpensive reproductions of Geller\'s art were popular with Chicago\'s Jewish Left in the 1930s, particularly a picture of a traditionally dressed Jewish man standing below the tracks of one of Chicago\'s elevated trains.[6]Geller regarded art as a tool for social reform.[8] In 1936, he signed the call for the first American Artists\' Congress \"Against War and Fascism\".[4][22] In the summer of 1936, the Chicago Society of Artists published their first annual block-print calendar called The Artist Calendar – 1937 that featured woodcuts by 30 Chicago artists, including Geller.[8] The calendar project, was intended to raise funds for the society activities and expose Chicago artists to a wider audience.[8]He was the most prominent of the 14 graphic artists who participated in A Gift to Biro-offerjan 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[23]) to support the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.[24][25] Geller\'s contribution to the portfolio was a wood cut based on Raisins and Almonds, the Yiddish lullaby written by Abraham Goldfaden, in 1880, for his operetta Shulamis.[8] The woodcut shows several scenes as a boy grows up and travels from Eastern Europe to Chicago, from the boy\'s mother and a goat surrounding his cradle, the boy studying, the grown man walking with a sack on his back passing an open market, working as a tailor to earn money to immigrate to the New World followed by a scene of an elevated train and the smokestacks of Chicago with unemployed workers demonstrating with banners and Flags.[8] The last scene on the theme of new hope, shows the man standing looking up and grasping a newly planted tree.[8] 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, Moris Topchevsky, Abraham Weiner, Raymond Katz, and Ceil Rosenberg.[8]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.[4][8][24] The cover featured a goat on the shore of Lake Michigan with Chicago’s skyline in the background.[2] As an important staple of Jewish life in Eastern Europe that were believed to have with mystical qualities, goats were a dominant symbol in Geller’s artistic vocabulary.[2] The woodcuts, four of which were in color, illustrated Jewish life, in addition to Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Midwestern American themes.[26]In May, 1938, the Osage Tribal Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma opened to the public.[27] It was the first tribally owned museum in the United States,[28] and was built with support from a WPA-sponsored program for the preservation of Native American culture.[27] As part of Osage Tribal Councilman John Joseph Mathews\' efforts to conserve Osage culture, Mathews obtained a second grant from the Federal Art Project to finance an art project commissioned for the museum’s opening that included oil portraits of Osage elders posing in various costumes.[27][28] Geller, who had spent time in the Southwest studying and painting Native American Indians, supervised the art project and painted around twelve of the portraits.[29] Geller\'s paintings are displayed at the museum.[28] 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.[30]Geller provided illustrations for some of the Nebraska Folklore pamphlets, written and compiled by Nebraska\'s Writers\' Project between 1937 and 1940.[31][citation needed] The pamphlets were produced as part of the \"Folklore Project\", a WPA Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) supported effort to document the life histories of people from different backgrounds and geographic regions.[32]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.[33]Geller became the first president of the American Jewish Arts Club following its formation in Chicago in 1940.[10]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.[34][35] The book, possibly the first English-language book to document the dances characteristic of the Jews of Eastern Europe, contains explanations of the purpose of various dances including folkloric information, step-by-step dance descriptions, detailed notes on the costumes to be used and music scores arranged by Max Janowski.[34][35]AwardsGeller\'s woodcuts won three Library of Congress National Print Exhibition awards.[2][4]Death and legacyGeller died on 23 February 1949, aged 59.[1] He was survived by his wife Olga Geller, his daughter Esther Silverman and his sister.[36] The Jewish Education Building in Chicago held a memorial exhibit for him shortly after his death.[37]Spertus Institute archiveThe Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago has a collection of papers documenting Geller\'s career.[9] 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 Raymond Katz, Beatrice Levy, Archibald Motley, Increase Robinson, and Carl Zigrosser.[9] 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.[9]The Spertus Institute also holds a number of Geller\'s oil paintings including Landscape with Figure (1924),[38] Portrait of a Man (1929),[39] Crossroads (ca. 1930),[40] Vase of Flowers (1931),[38] Mexican Village (1935),[39] Portrait of an Artist,[41] Portrait of Ben Shalom,[41] Jerusalem Courtyard,[41] Mitzi,[41] Church Landscape,[38] Portrait of a Woman[38] and two paintings, Tenant Scene (undated) and Park Scene (1946), painted on the same board support in a double-sided format.[42] The Spertus collection also includes a number of Geller\'s woodcut prints.[43]In March 2011, Susan Weininger, Professor Emerita of Art History at Roosevelt University gave a lecture titled \"The Dean of Chicago Jewish Artists: Todros Geller & the Chicago Context\" at North Shore Synagogue Beth El, Highland Park, Illinois, in conjunction with an exhibit of Geller\'s woodcut prints.[44][45]Books illustrated by Geller Heller, Selig (1926). Alte Vegn (in Yiddish). L. M. Shteyn.Hershfield, Bessie (Pomerantz-Honigbaum, Pessie) (1926). Kareln (Beads) (in Yiddish). Jewish Women\'s Art Club. L. M. Shteyn. Mattes, Lunuansky Lune (1926). Momentn (in Yiddish). Byalistakker yugnt farband. Wirth, Louis (1928). The Ghetto. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 1-56000-983-7. Lurie, Rose G.; Geller, Todros (1931). The Great March: Post Biblical Jewish Stories. Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Korman, Ezra (1932). Shekiah: Lider fun Elter un Toyt. L.M. Stein Farlag. Geller, Todros (1937). Fun Land tsu Land (From Land to Land) (in Yiddish). L. M. Shteyn/Labor World Press. Vizonsky, Nathan (1942). Ten Jewish Folk Dances: A Manual for Teachers and Leaders. American-Hebrew Theatrical League. Rosenblatt, Henry (1944). Mayn Likhtike Nesiah (My Lonesome Journey) (in Yiddish). L. M. Shteyn. Rosenzweig, Efraim Michael; Geller, Todros (1946). Had Gadya. Lino pictures by Todros Geller (in Yiddish). L. M. Stein. Todros Geller studied art in Ukraine as a teenager, and by the time he emigrated to Canada in 1906, he was prepared to enroll in the Ecole d’art in Montreal. He worked in Canada as a photographer, traveling across the country but in 1913 he married, and by 1918 had moved to Chicago, where he began studying at the School of the Art Institute (SAIC) while working at night. He entered the school at an opportune moment. The Ashcan School artist George Bellows, followed by Randall Davey, were visiting professors in 1919–20, and Geller chose to study with Bellows, who inspired the generation of students who formed the core of the modernist movement in Chicago. Bellows encouraged students to follow their own inclinations, to break free from artificial rules and restrictions, and advocated a gospel of democracy. Graduating in 1922, Geller was already teaching at the Jewish People’s Institute (JPI, a community center located in the heavily Jewish west side of Chicago), and quickly began exhibiting his work. In 1926, L. M. Stein published what became a wildly popular portfolio of woodcuts titled Yiddish Motifs, representing typical Jewish religious and occupational themes; the print run of 150 sold out within three weeks. Geller used the proceeds to finance a trip to explore and document the history of Jewish art, traveling to Paris, where he met Chagall; England, where he studied medieval manuscripts; Prague, where he visited old synagogues; and ultimately Palestine, where he found both ancient art and contemporary inspiration, basing many works of art on his experiences there, including the Untitled (Two Men) painting in this collection. This image of the modern pioneer holding a plant before the fertile landscape while a Hasidic man looks on is typical of Geller’s mature work in its contrast of the new world and the traditional one, a theme he addressed repeatedly. The brilliant color and simple flattened composition also show his engagement with the modernist modes flourishing in Chicago at the time. The trip also inspired the print portfolio Palestinian Motifs Cut in Wood (1930), which reflect an interest in modernism, particularly in the flattened, angular shapes and avoidance of traditional perspective in favor of a more abstract balance of forms, and provided him with subjects that he reworked in various media over a number of years. He returned from Palestine with a trove of knowledge of the history of Jewish art, and initiated an effort to establish a Museum of Jewish Art—the first anywhere, which he remained committed to for the rest of his life. He organized an exhibition at the JPI in 1928 to introduce people to the rich heritage of Jewish art that was not widely known, even in the Jewish community. The show traveled and so did Geller, lecturing and educating people in Yiddish culture and Jewish Nationalism—which, to him, was part of the liberation of all people in the world. His commitment to social justice was also an enduring aspect of his work. He contributed to portfolios of prints to benefit the Spanish Civil War published by the Chicago section of the American Artists’ Congress, For Spain and Liberty; and A Gift to Biroofferjan, donated by Chicago Jewish artists to raise money for settlers in the area that the Soviet Union had designated an autonomous Jewish homeland. Geller was active in Chicago’s Jewish community, a founding member of Around the Palette (a Jewish artists group later known as the American Jewish Art Club), and served as supervisor of art for the Board of Jewish Education and director of art for the College of Jewish Studies (now the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies). He created many works with Jewish themes, and created decorative objects ranging from ritual objects to large stained glass window designs for synagogues all over the U.S. and in Canada. He executed set designs for the Yiddish theater, book illustrations, and yearbook designs for Jewish organizations, and created logos for a number of schools and institutions. His versatility also extended to his subject matter. While he was known as the “Dean of Chicago Jewish artists,” he also addressed secular subjects in his paintings, prints, and book illustrations. These subjects ranged from voluptuous nudes to urban scenes done in the Cubist-inspired geometric mode known as Precisionism. He maintained a studio at 59 East Adams, which he shared with Emil Armin and later Belle Baranceanu. In the 1930s, he was employed as a printmaker on the Illinois Arts Project, one of the government supported art programs during the Depression. The work he produced for the projects include new imagery as well as reworkings of themes that had occupied him for years, and include numerous images dedicated to the issues of social justice that he addressed throughout his career. A native of Vinnitza, Ukraine, Todros Geller immigrated to Canada in 1906 and moved to Chicago in 1918. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and became a leading artist among the city’s art community. Known as the “dean” of Chicago’s Jewish artists, he was as a mentor and a source of inspiration to others, including Aaron Bohrod and Mitchell Siporin. Geller was a master printmaker who published several books of his graphics. For three consecutive years, he received awards for his woodcuts at the Annual Library of Congress National Print Exhibitions. He taught art at the Jewish People’s Institute in Chicago (1920–27), and conducted classes in his studio. Many prominent Chicago artists studied drawing and painting under Geller. Geller’s works were included in various exhibitions, and they are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Like David Bekker’s Bronx Express, which was based on a Yiddish play, Geller’s Raisins and Almonds was inspired by a Yiddish poem of the same title. The founder of the modern Yiddish theatre, Abraham Goldfaden, wrote the poem in 1880 as part of his operetta Shulamis, which features a mothers singing a lullaby to her son. The poem is an allegory of the Jewish people’s longing to return to their homeland: Under Baby’s cradle in the night Stands a goat so soft and snowy white The Goat will go to the market To bring you wonderful treats He’ll bring you raisins and almonds Sleep, my little one, sleep. In Eastern Europe, goats were an important staple of Jewish life, believed to be endowed with mystical qualities. The goat became an insignia or dominant symbol in Geller’s artistic vocabulary. On the cover of his book From Land to Land (1937), he positioned the goat on the shore of Lake Michigan with Chicago’s skyline as a backdrop. Raisins and Almonds is also included in this book published by L.M. Stein. In Raisins and Almonds, Geller draws a circle of life starting with the scene of Goldfaden’s lullaby, where the mother and the goat surround the cradle. In the second scene, the boy is studying in a way traditional to Jewish towns in Eastern Europe. Then, the grown-up man is wandering into the real world with a sack carried on his back, passing an open market. Continuing his journey, he works as a tailor to earn money to immigrate to the New World. The scene of the elevated train and the smokestacks marks his arrival in Chicago. From this point, the episodes turn political and current: unemployed workers demonstrate with banners and Flags in their hands. The last dream-like scene in the cycle repeats the theme of “new hope” in the title page of the portfolio: a man stands in an illuminated space looking up and grasping a newly planted tree. Todros Geller, born in Vinnitsa in the Ukraine in 1889, first studied art in Odessa, Russia, then in Montreal, where he immigrated in 1906. Seven years later he married and moved to Chicago, where he studied further at the School of the Art Institute (1918-23). According to Sparks, Geller took lessons from George Bellows. Bellows did indeed teach at the Art Institute School in the fall of 1919. Geller began exhibiting at the Art Institute in 1925. Two of his works were chosen to be illustrated in AIC annual exhibition catalogues: Jerusalem the Old (1929) and Reconciliation Dance (1930), and Geller exhibited his works there until his death in 1949. Geller joined the Chicago Society of Artists and served as president, eventually being named the “Dean of Chicago Jewish Artists.” In 1929 his painting Jerusalem the Old was illustrated in the catalogue of the Art Institute’s thirty-third annual exhibition; that year Geller had visited Palestine where he was inspired to paint biblical themes. He also created a woodcut series entitled Seven Palestinian Martyrs Cut on Wood. Chicago critic Bulliet believed the prints to be “in a modernistic vein, shorn of nonessentials but kept within the bounds of naturalism.” In the early 1930s Geller was teaching at the Midwest Art Students League. Geller took part in the outdoor Grant Park Art Fair just south of the Art Institute, in 1932, during the early years of the Great Depression. He was in the company of other great Chicago artists, including Aaron Bohrod, Julio DeDiego and Emil Armin. Also from 1932 comes a lithograph, Dreamer of the Ghetto, which features an introverted, if not demented man within an Expressionistic architectural setting. Geller was active in the Federal Art Project in Illinois, established in 1935, in the mural and graphics departments. As a participant in this program he studied Osage Indian life in Oklahoma and contributed paintings to William Wells High School (apparently the work there has been removed or destroyed). The Osage Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma has Geller’s works. Todros Geller signed the Call for the First American Artists Congress in 1936, which was a stand against fascism. Geller contributed to the Chicago Society of Artists’ first calendar in 1937. Two years later he exhibited at the Riverside Museum Exhibition, New York, as well as a wood engraving of New Mexico ruins at the New York World’s Fair. As one of America’s successful printmakers, Geller published A Volume of Sixty Woodcuts: From Land to Land. His engravings received awards at the Library of Congress National Print Exhibitions. Geller’s print called The Prophet was exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1941. He also designed stained glass windows in temples and synagogues throughout the United States and was called a leading authority on Jewish art. As a teacher, Geller gave art lessons at the Jewish People’s Institute in Chicago, at the College of Jewish Studies and at Hull House – one of his students was Mitchell Siporin. Geller was a member of the supervisory staff of the Board of Jewish Education, also in Chicago. In all, he was given five one-man shows, and when Geller passed away in 1949 the Board of Jewish Education and the American Jewish Arts Club sponsored a memorial exhibition. The Art Institute of Chicago owns Geller’s painting entitled Strange Worlds (1928). Here a severe older man with a beret looks at the viewer from under an “El” platform staircase, next to a newspaper stand with a collage-like assemblage of front pages. Behind is an urban scene that has rightly been called futuristic with blurred, cubistic forms in motion.