1960s Mane Katz, Russian French Judaica Jewish Shtetl Wedding Klezmer Musician Bronze Sculpture

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Bronze Double Bass Player Klezmer Musician Sculpture signed Mane-Katz at base. Numbered 8/8.

-Katz (1894-1962) was a Litvak painter born … Read more Bronze Double Bass Player Klezmer Musician Sculpture signed Mane-Katz at base. Numbered 8/8.

-Katz (1894-1962) was a Litvak painter born in Ukraine best known for his depictions of the Jewish shtetl in Eastern Europe. Emmanuel Mané-Katz (Hebrew:מאנה כץ), born Mane Leyzerovich Kats (1894–1962), was a Litvak painter born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, best known for his depictions of the Jewish shtetl in Eastern Europe. Particularly music figures and Jewish wedding scenes.
Mane-Katz moved to Paris at the age of 19 to study art, although his father wanted him to be a rabbi. During the First World War he returned to Russia, at first working and exhibiting in Petrograd; following the October revolution, he traveled back to Kremenchuk, where he taught art. In 1921, due to the ongoing fighting in his hometown during the civil war, he moved once again to Paris. There he became friends with Pablo Picasso and other important French artists, and was affiliated with the art movement known as the School of Paris; together with other outstanding Jewish artists of that milieu, he is sometimes considered to be part of a group referred to specifically as the Jewish School of Paris. Includes Russian, Ukrainian and Polish painters Jankel Adler, Arbit Blatas, Marc Chagall, Jacques Chapiro, Michel Kikoine, Pinchus Kremegne, Sigmund Menkes, Jules Pascin, Issachar Ryback, Jacques Lipchitz,Chana Orloff, and Ossip Zadkine. Ecole de Paris
In 1931, Mane-Katz's painting The Wailing Wall was awarded a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair. Early on, his style was classical and somber, but his palette changed in later years to bright, primary colors, with an emphasis on Jewish themes. His oils feature Judaic Hasidic characters, rabbis, Jewish musicians, beggars, yeshiva students and scenes from the East European shtetl made famous in the west by Sholem Aleichem and Tevye.
Mane-Katz made his first trip to Mandate Palestine in 1928, and thereafter visited the country annually. He said his actual home was Paris, but his spiritual home was Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. In 1939, as World War II was breaking out, he was drafted by the French and then was taken prisoner by the Germans. He escaped and went to the United States and remained there until 1945, exhibiting his paintings at Katia Granoff Gallery and Wildenstein Gallery. After the war, he returned to Paris where he had exhibited in the Salons. In Paris to the end of his career, he worked happily, painting hundreds of portraits of rabbis and works of Jewish symbolism. In this way, it is thought he was to satisfy his father, who had wanted him to be a rabbi. During these last years, he also resumed intense travel, going to Brazil, Japan, Israel and Argentina as well as throughout Europe.
Mane-Katz left his paintings and extensive personal collection of Judaica ritual art to the city of Haifa, Israel. Four years before his death, the mayor of Haifa, Abba Hushi, provided him with a building on Mt. Carmel to house his work, which became the Mane-Katz Museum. The exhibit includes Mane-Katz's oils, showing a progressive change in style over the years, a signed portrait of the artist by Pablo Picasso dated 1932 and a large collection of Jewish ritual objects.
In 1953, Mane-Katz donated eight of his paintings to the Glicenstein Museum in Safed, whose artists quarter attracted leading Israeli artists in the 1950s and 1960s, and housed some of the country's most important galleries. See less