PAINTINGS BY MAURYCY GOTTLIEB: A MEMORIAL EXHIBIT COMMEMORATING THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, JANUARY 19 - FEBRUARY 19, 1956

1956. Paperback. 1st edition. Original paper wrappers, 12mo, 16 pages. Includes illustrations and portrait; 19 cm. Catalog of an exhibition held at the Jewish Museum of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. / Cover title: Maurycy Gottlieb 1856-1879. "Maurycy Gottlieb's life story [by] Stephen S. Kayser": pages 6-14./ Includes bibliographical references (page 15) . "Among the founders of modern Jewish art, Maurycy Gottlieb [1856-1879] is prized in Poland as one of the most talented students of the great national artist Jan Matejko....His Jewish education was not extensive, though he attended heder.... In the course of his brief life he studied at the art schools of Vienna, Kraków, and Munich, and counted among his teachers some of the prominent academic artists of the 1870s. He was not the first Polish Jew to become an artist, but perhaps was the first to aspire to be both a "Polish" and a "Jewish" artist. Inspired by the dramatic national historical paintings of Matejko, he too tried his hand at depicting scenes from Poland's past and also executed several paintings in the popular orientalist fashion. Yet he also painted a number of works with overtly Jewish subject matter, including a scene of a Jewish wedding, two paintings of the Jewish heterodox philosopher Uriel da Costa, illustrations to Gotthold Lessing's play Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise) , portraits of several prominent contemporary Jewish figures, and depictions of famous Jewish literary figures (Shylock and Jessica, and Jankiel the musician from Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz) . He also produced a number of fascinating and revealing self-portraits, one in the guise of a Polish nobleman, another in Arab dress, and yet another in the clothing of the central European bourgeoisie. His most famous work is his large painting Jews Praying in the Synagogue on the Day of Atonement, executed in 1878....For his Jewish contemporaries, Gottlieb was living proof that Jews could succeed in the plastic arts, just as they had succeeded in literature and music, while Poles praised his patriotism and his efforts to make a place for himself in the world of Polish culture. After his untimely death from complications deriving from a throat infection at the age of 23, Jewish assimilationists, Polish advocates of Jewish acculturation, and representatives of the new Jewish nationalism all claimed him as their own. Gottlieb's reputation was kept alive in Poland by several important exhibitions in the interwar period. In Israel his posthumous reputation was greatly enhanced by an exhibition held in 1991, and by the publication of the catalog to this show. There and throughout the Jewish world Gottlieb has come to be regarded not only as a father of Jewish national art, but also as an important witness to the rich Jewish spiritual heritage of Eastern Europe that was destroyed by the Nazis" (YIVO, 2017) . SUBJECT(S) : Gottlieb, Maurycy, 1856-1879 -- Exhibitions. Exhibition catalogs. OCLC lists 12 copies worldwide. OCLC: 27112026.Very Good Condition. (AC-4-23).