From the Eastern Bloc to the Bronx: Early Acquisitions from The Art Collection

From the Eastern Bloc to the Bronx: Early Acquisitions from The Art Collection

On view May 5–August 25, 2019
Text by Emily O’Leary, Associate Curator

The Grosvenor Gallery in London promoted artists from Eastern Bloc countries at the height of the Cold War and came to play a central role in shaping the Hebrew Home Art Collection. Some of the first works that came into the collection were by artists included in solo and group exhibitions at the Gallery, which had been founded in 1960 by the American sociologist Eric Estorick (1913–1993). Prior to forming a permanent collection, in 1968 the Hebrew Home first exhibited works on loan from The Jewish Museum, New York, arranged by Jacob Reingold (1916–1999), who was then Executive Director of the Home. With a few key supporters, Reingold acquired work directly from Grosvenor Gallery beginning in 1975. At the time, Estorick was seeking care for his father, Morris Estorick (1890–1978), who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, which brought him into contact with the Hebrew Home. Morris resided at the Home for two years, from 1976 to 1978.

Today, Hebrew Home owns over 240 artworks made in the Eastern Bloc by 53 different artists that were acquired from Grosvenor Gallery. The paintings and works on paper in the present exhibition are by 35 of those artists and organized around nine key shows they participated in at the Gallery between 1961 and 1967.  When these artists—who lived and worked in the Soviet Socialist Republics of Armenia and Russia and satellite states Hungary and Czechoslovakia (today the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic)—were shown at Grosvenor Gallery, art from “behind the Iron Curtain” was largely unseen by Western audiences. As artists in the Eastern Bloc, they worked under oppressive conditions resulting from limits set by the government about what kind of art was permitted. The only style officially allowed was Socialist Realism, a figurative approach to art that glorified Soviet ideals. The exhibitions Estorick mounted offered a rare glimpse for the West into how Eastern Bloc artists functioned within this restrictive environment.

Exhibitions at Grosvenor Gallery

Lithographs by Twenty-seven Soviet Artists (May 9–June 10, 1961)

Boris Ermolaev (Russian, 1903–1982), At School on the Eve of the School Year, 1961, lithograph, 17 x 23 inches, HHAR 1513

Lithographs by Twenty-seven Soviet Artists was the first exhibition of Eastern Bloc artists at Grosvenor Gallery in 1961. It featured Russian printmakers from the Leningrad Experimental Graphics Laboratory (LEGL), an official workshop that included master lithographers who used the medium to create intricate images with complex color palettes.

Membership in the Artists’ Union—the body that oversaw artistic activities throughout the Soviet Union and maintained the printmaking workshops—was required in order to work at LEGL. The LEGL artists’ subjects had to adhere to Soviet standards, as exemplified in both the overtly socialist message in Boris Ermolaev’s  At School on the Eve of the School Year (1961), depicting peasant women and children on the collective farm, and the more decorative, Matissean still lifes of Alexander Vedernikov. In some cases, however, the subject fell into a more gray area, as was the case with Grigory Izrailevich’s ominous black and white owls, in such works as Time Flies (1960), which symbolize the fleeting nature of time.

Estorick recognized the quality and innovation in the work of the LEGL artists during a visit to the workshop in 1960 and the exhibition proved to be a successful venture for the Gallery. The London showing garnered enough commercial and critical success that it was remounted (with work by all but two of the original artists) in New York City later that same year.  Subsequently, The Museum of Modern Art acquired prints by Ermolaev, Anatoli Kaplan, Gerta Nemenova, Alexander Shenderov and Vedernikov.

 Anatoli Kaplan: The World of Sholem Aleichem and Other Scenes, Tales and Songs of Russian Provincial Life (November 22–December 31, 1961)

After Kaplan was first shown in the Gallery’s 1961 LEGL exhibition, Estorick mounted a solo show of 131 lithographs. He demonstrated a preference for Kaplan’s work well beyond that of the other artists, as suggested by LEGL artist Izrailevich’s comment that when Estorick visited the workshop he purchased more lithographs by Kaplan than anyone else (Kononikhin 62).

Throughout his life, Kaplan worked almost exclusively on Jewish themes. Between 1937–1941, he created Kasrilovka, a lithographic series that depicted scenes of nostalgic shtetl life. Named after the fictitious small town in Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem’s stories, Kasrilovka was purportedly commissioned to encourage Russian Jews to resettle in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO), a far-flung region in eastern Russia that borders China. The JAO’s regional seat of government is the better known town, Birobidzhan.

Estorick also commissioned Kaplan to expand portfolios based on Aleichem stories, as well as The Little Goat (1958–1961), a series based on a song from the Passover liturgy. Dedication Page (1961), included in this exhibition, was added to the series and indicates that the edition was printed exclusively for Grosvenor Gallery.

Kaplan’s relationship with the Hebrew Home and Estorick was longer and steadier than any of the other artists. The Hebrew Home’s first acquisitions from the Gallery in 1975 were Kaplan’s lithographs and Solomon Gershov’s paintings. Both artists focused on Jewish subjects. Reingold greatly admired Kaplan’s work and supported his career into the 1980s, encouraging other Jewish institutions to acquire his prints. In a letter dated May 3, 1976, in the Hebrew Home Archives, Reingold wrote to Kaplan about arranging a solo exhibition of his work. Ten years later, a large solo show of Kaplan’s prints, drawings and ceramics was finally realized at the recently founded Judaica Museum.

Favorsky (July 10–August 17, 1962)

Vladimir Favorsky was a revered Russian artist known for his woodcut illustrations of Russian folktales and to literary works by Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Shakespeare. Estorick mounted the artist’s first major solo exhibition in the West in 1962. Entitled simply Favorsky, it spanned 50 years of the artist’s career and featured loans from his personal collection that Estorick was able to arrange after first visiting Favorsky at his Moscow home in December 1961.

The exhibition included rare linocuts from the Samarkand suite, three of which represent Favorsky in the present exhibition and were created during the artist’s evacuation to the city of Samarkand in Soviet Uzbekistan between 1941 and 1943. The evacuation was an effort by the Soviet government to safeguard its most valued intelligentsia from the German advance during Operation Barbarossa by sending them to remote regions.

Favorsky took up linocut printmaking because it was difficult to practice woodblock printmaking due to the lack of available material. He had a student in Saint Petersburg send him linoleum as a replacement. Samarkand depicts the everyday lives of the Uzbek people—many of whom had to open their homes to evacuees—among their caravans and camels.

Despite the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition’s positive reception in the press at the time, Favorsky remains in relative obscurity among Western audiences today.

 First Image: Paintings and Sculpture by Artists of the Gallery (November 22, 1963–January 4, 1964)

This exhibition of 15 artists was mounted in celebration of Grosvenor Gallery’s move to a larger space in 1963. Nine of the artists were from the United Kingdom and three from Italy. The remaining three were Eastern Bloc artists: the Czech painter Richard Fremund, represented here by two abstract townscape paintings, and Hungarians Gyula Konfár and Mihály Schéner, who subsequently had a two-person exhibition.

A trip to Paris where he saw firsthand such modern masters as Picasso, Matisse and Dufy in 1956 was pivotal to Fremund’s approach to art. He also developed an awareness of contemporary art beyond the Eastern Bloc through his close friend Jiří Siblík, a Czech art historian, who was able to travel abroad and owned books and prints by major international artists. Siblík’s home created a nexus for young Czech artists, including Fremund, who sought access to the contemporary Western art world (Chmelarová 7). Estorick exhibited several artists from within Fremund’s circle, all of whom used vivid colors, abstraction and simplified geometry in their paintings. It was such bold experimentation that marked Fremund as a dissident artist. He died tragically in a car accident in 1969.

 Gyula Konfár, Mihály Schéner: Two Contemporary Hungarian Artists (March 3–24, 1964)

This exhibition of 52 paintings was the only one in which the Gallery featured Hungarian art exclusively, including Konfár’s White Cottages, Red Roofs (1964) and Schéner’s Self-Portrait at Work (1964). Both Konfár and Schéner worked in similar dark, expressionistic styles and, according to the Grosvenor show’s catalogue, enjoyed successful careers in their home country and exhibited internationally. Nonetheless, neither artist ever exceeded moderate successes within Hungary. Estorick framed  the emotional quality of Konfár’s painting, evident in the typical impasto handling and brooding colors in his White Cottages, Red Roofs, within the context of his relationship to the late 19th-century Hungarian School and referred to him as “one of the most highly esteemed artists in Hungary.”  The Hebrew Home owns three similar landscapes executed in this vein.

Schéner’s Self-Portrait at Work, a genre he utilized frequently, depicts an artist at work in a dark interior hunched over a palette and paintbrush. Executed only eight years after the short-lived Hungarian revolution of 1956 that was brutally quashed by the Soviet government, the painting may reflect deeper unrest given the oppressive atmosphere of Soviet-controlled Hungary. The self-portrait functions as a vehicle for introspection with heavy, dark colors that emphasize the artist’s solitude.

Aspects of Contemporary Soviet Art (June 8–28, 1964)

There was no single style that dominated Aspects of Contemporary Soviet Art, a sprawling exhibition of 82 artists that offered Western audiences a rare opportunity to view new and recent art from the Eastern Bloc. In a 1963 New York Times article announcing the forthcoming exhibition, Estorick stated that he sought works from the Eastern Bloc because he thought they would be salable, and also capable of providing a bridge between the Soviet Union and the capitalist West.

Acknowledging what Estorick had accomplished in securing the Soviets’ permission to export the artworks to London, British art critic Nigel Gosling noted in The Observer: “The show is a milestone. For the first time in 40 years, Soviet paintings are exhibited for sale outside Russia.” At the same time, he criticized it, lamenting “. . . I prefer many Soviet propaganda paintings, big and brassy and bold, to many of the feeble canvasses shown here.”

Nine of the paintings in From the Soviet Bloc to the Bronx are executed in the Soviet Impressionist style, an approach to art that drew influence from French Impressionism while maintaining a socialist message. They depict well-known Russian landmarks and architecture, bucolic landscapes and farm scenes. Three paintings of Armenian subjects—landmarks with nationalist overtones and a still life depicting the bounty of collective farming—reflect the influence of modernist movements in Armenian art that began decades earlier. Four paintings—two landscapes and two still lifes—in muted colors are by artists who worked in what was later termed the Severe Style, a subdued, less propagandistic form of Socialist Realism.

Out of 99 oil paintings listed in the Aspects of Contemporary Soviet Art catalogue (works on paper were uncatalogued), Hebrew Home owns 16.

Vincent Hložník: Paintings and Graphics (April 13–May 8, 1965)

Vincent Hložník was a Slovak artist whom Estorick featured in a major solo exhibition of 96 works in 1965. The catalogue included a brief introduction by Slovak art historian and critic Rastislav Matuštík, who recognized Hložník’s “tragic vision” as having grown “out of a feeling of kinship with those who suffered and died in the Second World War.” The artist’s perceptions were shaped by the atrocities he witnessed while a student at the School of Applied Arts in Prague from 1937–1942, which coincided with the German invasion and occupation of the city beginning in 1939.

Hložník went on to a successful career as an artist and teacher in Czechoslovakia where he established the highly influential Department of Graphic Art and Illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (now in Slovakia), which he directed from 1952 to 1972. He also earned international recognition at the 1958 Venice Biennale when he received an award for printmaking given to an artist under 45 by the David E. Bright Foundation based in Los Angeles. The other Bright Foundation winners that year were Kenneth Armitage (1916–2002) of Great Britain for sculpture and Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) of Spain for painting.

Although not considered an outright dissident artist, Hložník had a strong affinity for Surrealism, which he attributed to his introduction in 1940 to a group of young artists with whom he discussed the then-banned style. He described that experience as opening new artistic possibilities for him to explore the purely imaginative (Petránsky 138–135). His surrealistic series of linocuts, Dreams (1962)—a cycle of prints that cautions about the horrors of war—were shown in the 1965 Grosvenor exhibition.

Hložník left a lasting legacy passed on to generations of students and his humanistic approach remains an influence on Slovak graphic artists today. His work is on permanent view in galleries and museums in the Slovak Republic.

 Oskar [sic] Rabin: Paintings, 1956-1965 (June 10–July 3, 1965)

Oscar Rabin, founder of the Nonconformist movement in Moscow in the 1970s and a major international artist today, had his first solo exhibition in the West at Grosvenor Gallery in 1965. The exhibition included Cats Under Crescent Moon (1963) and Bread and Factory (1964). Both paintings are typical of his style: expressionistic, industrial landscapes executed with heavy black outlines, punctuated by smokestacks and wires. Cats—an animal he recalled as being ubiquitous in the Moscow suburbs where he lived—were a frequent motif in his work and three appear in Cats Under Crescent Moon. Rabin described the cat’s shape as capable of resembling devils, railway levers or curling signatures.

The reception of Rabin’s exhibition in the London press was mixed. Art critic Terence Mullaly praised his work in The Daily Telegraph. Other reviewers simply labeled the paintings as uncontroversial. Nonetheless, Rabin faced backlash at home in Russia. In 1966, a scathing critique that appeared in Sovetskaya Kultura, the official newspaper published by the Soviet Ministry of Culture, gave Rabin’s paintings the epithet “neurotic” and attacked his willingness to exhibit at a Western venue.

Rabin’s activities continued to cause problems for the Soviet government. In 1974 he was an organizer of the infamous “bulldozer exhibition” held outside Moscow. In an incident that was reported internationally, dissident artists who were prohibited from participating in official galleries mounted an exhibition in an empty lot that was brutally shut down by the Soviet authorities with water cannons and bulldozers.

Rabin is the only artist in From the Eastern Bloc to the Bronx who resettled in the West. In 1978 while abroad in Paris, Rabin and his family were abruptly stripped of their Soviet citizenship, forcing them into exile. His citizenship was restored in 1990 but Rabin remained in Paris until his death in 2018.

The World of Sholem Aleichem, Kaplan lithographs, Gershov paintings (Opening date unknown­–February 14, 1967)

This exhibition was the last at the Gallery to focus on Eastern Bloc artists and was on view at the same time as works by South African artist Aileen Lipkin in 1967. It featured Kaplan’s lithographs illustrating the stories of the famous Yiddish writer and Gershov’s imaginary painted portraits of Tevye, the eponymous protagonist of Aleichem’s series of short stories Tevye the Milkman.

Gershov and Kaplan were the first artists the Hebrew Home acquired from Estorick in 1975. It’s likely that Reingold, himself an émigré from Russian Łódź (now Poland), who settled in the US in 1936, and Estorick, whose family fled Russia in 1905 to escape anti-Semitism, shared a desire to support Soviet Jewish artists. Gershov, who painted Jewish themes in an expressionistic style and was critical of Soviet policies regarding art, was arrested twice for his views, first in 1932 and then again in 1948. Both times, all of his work was destroyed. The Hebrew Home owns six paintings of Tevye by Gershov that were most likely influenced by his travels through Latvia in 1957 and 1960 when only a remnant of the pre-war Jewish population remained.

The Grosvenor Gallery’s focus on exhibitions of Eastern Bloc artists was concentrated in the period between 1961 and 1967, according to the Gallery’s available records, and coincided with an ambitious general program of a dozen or more exhibitions each year. During this same period, the Gallery organized at least 80 solo and group exhibitions featuring artists mostly from Western Europe. While he moved his focus away from Soviet Bloc artists after 1967, Estorick continued to include some in other broader, thematic group shows. Many works by Eastern Bloc artists remained in Gallery inventory beyond these critical early years and were thus available for the Hebrew Home to acquire in the 1970s. Although Estorick died in 1993, the Grosvenor Gallery remains active in London to this day.

 

Checklist of the Exhibition

Mariam Aslamazian (Armenian, 1907–2006)
Collective Farm Abundance, 1962
Oil on canvas, 34 x 54 inches
HHAR 3009

Alexander Dubinchik (Russian, 1922–1997)
A Warm Evening, ca. 1963
Oil on canvas, 20 x 31 1/2 inches
HHAR 1279

Boris Ermolaev (Russian, 1903–1982)
At School on the Eve of the School Year, 1961
Lithograph, 17 x 23 inches
HHAR 1513

Irina Fateeva (Russian, 1908–1981)
Galina Solovieva (Russian, 1908–1984)
Magic Carpet, ca. 1964
Gouache on paper, 16 1/2 x 12 inches
HHAR 1272

Vladimir Favorsky (Russian, 1886–1964)
Untitled, from Samarkand, 1942
Linocut, 13 3/8 x 17 1/4 inches
HHAR 1198

Arba, from Samarkand, 1942
Linocut, 11 x 13 1/2 inches
HHAR 1199

Talk About Gunpowder, from Samarkand, 1942
Linocut, 24 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches
HHAR 194

Moisey Feigen (Russian, 1904–2008)
Winter Landscape, ca. early 1960s
Oil on canvas, 35 1/2 x 47 inches
HHAR 1895

Richard Fremund (Czech, 1928–1969)
Blue Landscape, 1957
Oil on canvas, 36 x 45 1/2 inches
HHAR 125

Easter Landscape, 1963
Oil on canvas, 35 x 45 1/2 inches
HHAR 1276

Vladimir Gavrilov (Russian, 1923–1970)
Uglich, The Church of Iowan, 1963
Oil on canvas, 37 1/4 x 31 inches
HHAR 2009

Vladimir Gedikyan (Russian, b. 1928)
Tereshchenko, 1963
Tempera on paper, 22 x 27 inches
HHAR 655

Solomon Gershov (Russian, 1906–1989)
Tevye, ca. 1963–1964
Oil on canvas, 25 x 26 1/2 inches
HHAR 40

Grigoriev (Russian, dates unknown)
The Golden Cockerel, ca. 1960s
Gouache on paper, 22 1/2 x 29 inches
HHAR 665

Vincent Hložník (Slovak, 1919–1997)
Untitled, from Dreams, 1962
Linocut, 23 5/8 x 16 3/8 inches
HHAR 1407

Untitled, from Dreams, 1962
Linocut, 23 5/8 x 16 3/8 inches
HHAR 1421

Mikhail Ivanov (Russian, 1926–2000)
Sunny Morning, 1959
Oil on canvas, 23 x 26 1/2 inches
HHAR 1855

Grigory Izrailevich (Russian, 1924–1999)
Times Flies, 1960
Lithograph, 24 5/16 x 18 1/8 inches
HHAR 151

Anatoli Kaplan (Russian, 1902–1980)
On the Griboyedov Canal, from Leningrad, 1947
Lithograph, 18 3/4 x 14 1/8 inches
HHAR 1187

Kasrilovka (Religion is the opium of the people), 1939
Lithograph, 29 1/4 x 21 3/4 inches
HHAR 554

Cow in a Window, from Kasrilovka, 1941
Lithograph, 17 5/8 x 20 1/8 inches
HHAR 129

Verse 6: Came the water and quenched the fire, from The Little Goat, 1958–1961, published 1961
Lithograph, 24 3/16 x 18 7/16 inches
HHAR 1496

Dedication Page, from The Little Goat, 1961
Lithograph, 24 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches
HHAR 285

Gyula Konfár (Hungarian, 1933–2008)
White Cottages, Red Roofs, 1964
Oil on board, 27 1/4 x 29 1/4 inches
HHAR 1659

Pavel Kuznetsov (Russian, 1878–1968)
vening Landscape, 1956
Oil on canvas, 28 x 35 inches
HHAR 1167

Vera Matiukh (Russian, b. Germany, 1910–2003)
In the Train, 1960
Lithograph, 24 1/4 x 18 3/8 inches
HHAR 124

Alexey Morosov (Russian, 1896–1965)
After the Thaw, 1960
Oil on board, 19 1/2 x 28 inches
HHAR 1280

Gerta Nemenova (Russian, b. Germany, 1905–1986)
Korean Dancer, ca. 1960
Lithograph, 22 x 15 7/8 inches
HHAR 185

Anatoli Nikitch (Russian, 1918–1994)
Still Life with Plants, 1958
Oil on canvas, 18 x 33 inches
HHAR 132

Still Life, 1963
Oil on canvas, 41 x 23 1/2 inches
HHAR 2277

Pyotr Ossovsky (Russian, b. Ukraine, 1925–2015)
At the Railway Crossing, 1963
Oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 45 inches
HHAR 1386

Albert Papikian (Armenian, 1926–1997)
Aragats, 1962
Oil on board, 49 x 55 1/2 inches
HHAR 42

Alexsei Pisarev (Russian, 1909–1970)
Uglich, 1960
Oil on board, 19 3/4 x 27 1/2 inches
HHAR 84

Uglich, ca. 1960
Oil on board, 19 1/4 x 27 1/4 inches
HHAR 85

Igor Popov (Russian, b. Ukraine, 1927–1999)
Kizhi, The Cathedral (Preobrazhensky Church), 1963
Gouache on board, 40 x 28 1/2 inches
HHAR 2016

Oscar Rabin (Russian, 1928–2018)
Cats Under Crescent Moon, 1963
Oil on canvas, 35 1/2 x 43 1/2 inches
HHAR 1076

Bread and Factory, 1964
Oil on canvas, 28 x 39 inches
HHAR 1075

Mihály Schéner (Hungarian, 1923–2009)
Self-Portrait at Work, 1964
Oil on board, 27 3/4 x 39 1/2 inches
HHAR 2994

Alexander Shenderov (Russian, 1897–1967)
Before The Mirror, ca. 1961
Lithograph, 25 x 15 inches
HHAR 187

Peter Shlikov (Russian, 1917–1920)
The Plain Before Mount Ararat, 1962
Oil on canvas, 23 1/2 x 29 1/2 inches
HHAR 1828

Mikhail Skouliari (Russian, 1905–1985)
Pink Tea Pot, 1960
Lithograph, 24 1/4 x 18 1/4 inches
HHAR 1518

Vladimir Sudakov (Russian, 1912–1994)
In the North, 1962
Lithograph, 18 x 24 inches
HHAR 586

Alexander Vedernikov (Russian, 1898–1975)
Still Life with Deer, 1956
Lithograph, 24 3/8 x 18 3/8 inches
HHAR 93

Alexandra Yakobson (Russian, 1903–1966)
The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka), 1960
Lithograph, 24 x 18 inches
HHAR 1321

Leonid Zakharov (Russian, 1928–1986)
Decoration Sketch for the Play ‘Echo of the Bryansk Forest,’ 1960
Oil on paper, 21 x 33 inches
HHAR 107

All works are from Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale

 

Further reading:

Addison, Judith. “Rabin. London-Moscow.” In Oskar Rabin. Early Works on Paper. Online exh. cat. Accessed March 24, 2015. http://www.oskarrabin.com/rabinlondonmoscow/.

Anderson, Raymond H. “Symbolist Artist Scored in Soviet; Rabin Said to Aid the West with ‘65 London Show.” New York Times, June 15, 1966, 9.

Bown, Matthew Cullerne. “Painting in the non-Russian Republics.” In Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-party State, 1917-1992. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993, 140–153.

Chmelarová, Marcela. Richard Fremund: krajiny z let 1959-1965. Exh. cat. Prague: Orlys Art Auctions, 2011.

Ehrenburg, Ilya, and Terence Mullaly. Anatoli Kaplan: The World of Sholem Aleichem and Other Scenes, Tales and Songs of Russian Provincial Life. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1961.

Estorick, Eric, and Jennifer Louis. Oskar Rabin: Paintings, 1956-1965. Exh. Cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1965.

Estorick, Eric, and John Synge. First Image: Painting and Sculpture by Artists of the Gallery. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1963.

Estorick, Eric, and Terence Mullaly. Favorsky. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1962.

Estorick, Eric. Aspects of Contemporary Soviet Art: Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1964.

Gershov, Solomon, and Lev Mochalov. Solomon Gershov. St. Petersburg: P.R.P. LLC, 2004.

Grosvenor Gallery. Gyula Konfár, Mihály Schéner: Two Contemporary Hungarian Artists, Exh. cat., London, 1964.

Gruson, Sydney. “Russia Offers Art for London Sale.” New York Times, May 6, 1963, 31.

Kononikhin, Nikolay. “Leningrad Experimental Laboratory: Selected Portraits.” In Leningrad Lithography: Meeting Place. Exh. cat. Saint Petersburg: Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House, 2017, 46–82.

Matuštík, Radislav. Vincent Hložník: Paintings and Graphics. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1965.

Mullaly, Terence. Lithographs by Twenty-Seven Soviet Artists. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1961.

Petránsky, Ľudovít. Vincent Hložník. Bratislava: Tatran, 1997.

Stock, M.F. “Leningrad Experimental Graphics Laboratory and Cultural Diplomacy in the 1960’s.” In Leningrad Lithography: Meeting Place. Exh. cat. Saint Petersburg: Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House, 2017, 31–36.

Wren, Christopher S. “Russians Disrupt Modern Art Show with Bulldozers.” New York Times, September 16, 1974, C17.

This text originally appeared in the brochure produced on the occasion of the exhibition From the Eastern Bloc to the Bronx: Early Acquisitions from The Art Collection on view at the Derfner Judaica Museum and Jacob Reingold Pavilion from May 5–August 25, 2019.

About the Hebrew Home at Riverdale

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, the Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus, including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provides educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere.  RiverSpring Health is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 18,000 older adults in greater New York through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
www.hebrewhome.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Featured image: Oscar Rabin (Russian, 1928–2018), Cats Under Crescent Moon, 1963, oil on canvas, 35 ½ x 43 ½ inches, HHAR 1076