Bouquet of Asters

Jakub Szer (1890–1944) was famous mainly for his landscapes. He painted Jewish Vilnius, and liked to depict the area around the village of Bastūnai (Vagabonds) near Varanavo (now in Belarus). Maybe this modest bunch of asters, immortalised as a memory of a peaceful, carefree summer, was picked in a garden in that village. During the Second World War, Szer was imprisoned in the Vilnius Ghetto. He worked for the Ghetto theatre, took part in gatherings of Ghetto artists, and painted some sites in the Old Town for the Germans. He was murdered in the Vaivara concentration camp in Estonia. Some of his works survive in museums in Vilnius and Warsaw. Unfortunately, the pictures from Szer’s exhibition in the Vilnius Art Museum on the eve of the war were destroyed by the Nazis.

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Litvak melancholy is prominent in the work of the interwar Vilnius artists Janusz Trefler and Jakob Szer. Art critics found Max Band’s paintings sombre. The French critic N. Frank wrote: ‘It was in cosmopolitan Paris that Max Band became even more Jewish. His characteristic feature is sadness. Even his flowers bloom sadly. The rain of sadness sprinkles his works, his landscapes, his portraits’ (1939, Review, 24:7). Having mastered the sfumato painting technique (from Italian fumo for ‘fog’, sfumato for ‘disappearing’), whereby colours and tones are so subtly combined that it is difficult to distinguish where one colour or tone changes into another, Band created a particularly melancholic and lyrical mood. Litvak melancholy persisted in the work of artists during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The landscape Evening Closes by Augustinas Savickas, and works by Adomas Jacovskis, became symbols of sadness.

Text author Vilma Gradinskaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, STORIES OF LITVAK ART (2023). Compiler and author Vilma Gradinskaitė

Jakub Szer (1890–1944) was famous mainly for his landscapes. He painted Jewish Vilnius, and liked to depict the area around the village of Bastūnai (Vagabonds) near Varanavo (now in Belarus). Maybe this modest bunch of asters, immortalised as a memory of a peaceful, carefree summer, was picked in a garden in that village. During the Second World War, Szer was imprisoned in the Vilnius Ghetto. He worked for the Ghetto theatre, took part in gatherings of Ghetto artists, and painted some sites in the Old Town for the Germans. He was murdered in the Vaivara concentration camp in Estonia. Some of his works survive in museums in Vilnius and Warsaw. Unfortunately, the pictures from Szer’s exhibition in the Vilnius Art Museum on the eve of the war were destroyed by the Nazis.

Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė

Litvak melancholy is prominent in the work of the interwar Vilnius artists Janusz Trefler and Jakob Szer. Art critics found Max Band’s paintings sombre. The French critic N. Frank wrote: ‘It was in cosmopolitan Paris that Max Band became even more Jewish. His characteristic feature is sadness. Even his flowers bloom sadly. The rain of sadness sprinkles his works, his landscapes, his portraits’ (1939, Review, 24:7). Having mastered the sfumato painting technique (from Italian fumo for ‘fog’, sfumato for ‘disappearing’), whereby colours and tones are so subtly combined that it is difficult to distinguish where one colour or tone changes into another, Band created a particularly melancholic and lyrical mood. Litvak melancholy persisted in the work of artists during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The landscape Evening Closes by Augustinas Savickas, and works by Adomas Jacovskis, became symbols of sadness.

Text author Vilma Gradinskaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album OBJECTS ON SHOW (2017). Compiler and author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, STORIES OF LITVAK ART (2023). Compiler and author Vilma Gradinskaitė