Yehuda Pen

Yehuda Pen (Russian Юдель Пэн, .. * 24 Maijul / June 5 1854greg in Nowoaleksandrowsk (today again Zarasai, Lithuania), † 28 February or March 1, 1937 in Vitebsk ) was a Jewish- Lithuanian painter and teacher, while one of the most important figures of the Jewish Renaissance in the Belarus art of the beginning of the 20th century.

Life and work

Yehuda Pen was born on 24 May 1854 in the city Nowoaleksandrowsk. His talent for drawing was apparently early and in 1867 he was the neighboring Dvinsk ( Daugavpils today, Latvia) sent to a painter in teaching. In 1879 he went from there to St. Petersburg, where the picture was him at first due to lack of Russian language knowledge denied to the art academy. After two years of private studies, he was in 1882 but recorded and studied under Pavel Chistyakov. After his successful completion of 1886 he went back to Zarasai. There he could not find employment and went to Riga, where he found a patron in Baron Korff.

In 1890, he attended Ilya Repin in Vitebsk and opened there in 1896 at the invitation of the local governor, the first private art school on Belarusian soil - the Jewish art school. His students there were, among others Ilya Masel, Yefim Minin, Oskar Meshchaninov, Marc Chagall, Ossip Zadkin, El Lissitzky. He put emphasis on learning the basic techniques and drawing. However, his students often held in sketchbook determined the life of the poor Jewish shtetl, as his representative looked Pen.

In 1899 he presented for the first time in Vitebsk his own works from 1908 followed an exhibition in St. Petersburg. Pen was otherwise included in the Artists Guild. Even in the Soviet Union, he was able to establish itself as a respected artist and teacher. In 1927 he received the award Honored by Jewish artists.

On the night of 28 February to 1 March 1937, Pen was murdered in his home in Vitebsk. The exact background fact have never been elucidated. After his death, a gallery was set up with his works in Vitebsk. You are now in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Vitebsk and the National Art Museum of Belarus.

Gallery

Watchmaker

Divorce

Talmudic scholar

Portrait of Marc Chagall, 1915

Swell

• WA Schischanow: Witebski Musej sowremennowo iskusstwa. Istoriia sosdanija i kollekzi 1918-1941. Medisont, Minsk 2007, p 144