Chaïm Goldberg, Music Lesson, Judaica Painting, Shtetl Life

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

Chaim Goldberg -- born … Read more 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 See less