A courtyard in Vilnius University

Series Vilnius, III, 1957.

Rozin’s series Vilnius reflects the artist’s training and the Leningrad tradition of graphic art: strong and realistic draughtsmanship, skilfully engraved in a complicated multi-colour linocut technique. He created a simultaneously grim, beautiful and dramatic picture of Vilnius, which makes us wonder about his viewpoint: whether it is the tense atmosphere of Stalin’s times, or the tragedy of the Holocaust and the memory of the murdered residents of Vilnius that hangs over the town. He chose standard sights in the Old Town for his pictures: the Cathedral, the Gates of Dawn, St Anne’s Church, courtyards, and narrow streets that had already been given new Soviet names. But all of his subjects are portrayed either in autumn or in winter, in the evening or at night, against the background of a dark and stormy sky, and dramatic clouds. It is a joyless city, and even the tower on Gediminas Hill, with the flag of Soviet Lithuania flying from it, exudes a grim late autumn mood. Having experienced the dismal Soviet reality, Rozin joined the 1970s wave of Jewish emigration, left for Israel in 1973, and settled in Tel Aviv. Like many others who left the Soviet ‘paradise’, his name was forgotten in Soviet Lithuania, and the series Vilnius disappeared from the public sphere and was removed from the collections of libraries. Today the series is a publishing rarity.

Series Vilnius, III, 1957