Music Lesson, Judaica Painting, Shtetl Life

Dimensions: H: 40.0, W: 30.25 IN

Genre: Judaica Subject: People Medium: Oil Surface: Canvas Country: United States Dimensions: 40" x 30 1/4"

Chaim Goldberg -- born in the Polish shtetl of Kazimierz Dolny

Chaim Goldberg has worked in nearly every medium available to the visual artist from watercolors to sculpture. But throughout his long career, one theme has been central to all his work-the dignity and nobleness Chaim Goldberg has worked in nearly every medium available to the visual artist from watercolors to sculpture. But throughout his long career, one theme has been central to all his work-the dignity and nobleness of man.

Goldberg has a deep understanding of human values, for he has spent much of his 60-odd years searching for them. Born in a Polish village in 1917 in the Jewish "shtetl" he later moved to Siberia where the Soviets took a dim view of his realistic depictions of the simple peasants. Returning to Poland, he found the Russians had made it difficult for him to work there as well. After World War II, in 1947, Goldberg was awarded a Fellowship by the Polish Government to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where one of his instructors was Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967). By 1955, Goldberg wished to leave Poland and was to smuggle his art out of that country via Israeli diplomatic officials. After working out of Tel Aviv, he arrived in America by 1967. But the "shtetl," until recently, has remained the main motif in his art, just as it has for those two other famous Slavic emigrants, Marc Chagall and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Singer has said Goldberg's work "is enriching Jewish art and the image of our tradition." Macrc Chagall has undoubtedly had a strong influence on Goldberg. They both celebrate the everyday village life as they remember it from childhood. Goldberg's domestic scenes may be more realistic on the surface, with fewer flights of inspired fancy, but they are no less true to their time and place.

PERMANENT COLLECTIONS

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York National Museum of Fine Art, Warsaw President's House, Jerusalem Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. Museum Petit Palais, Geneva Museum Yad Vashem, Jerusalem Museum of History, Warsaw Museum Yad Labanim, Israel Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Germany National College of Fine Art, Washington, D.C. Museum of Modern Art, New York Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art, Boston Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut Judaica Museum, Phoenix, Arizona Public Library, Los Angeles Museum of Art, San Francisco Public Library, New York Lowe Museum University, Miami Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut Springfield Museum of Fine Art, Springfield, Massachusetts Spertus Museum, Chicago