When Art Line is a Life Thread: New Exhibition in Vilnius

Original Litvak Art at the YIVO commemorative exhibition in Vilnius

Part V

From early March 2025, a special multi-genre exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is on display in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where the legendary YIVO was conceived back in 1925. The exhibition, which, the first in the world, celebrates the special anniversary, is organised in close cooperation with New York based  YIVO and twenty more institutions and collections from Lithuania and Poland, by Vilnius Picture Gallery, part of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art. 

The versatility of this thorough and large exhibition dictated its reviewing in the way of a series of essays, with previous parts listed at the end of this review. 

Public at the opening of the YIVO commemorating exhibition at the Vilnius Picture Gallery. March 2025. (C) Inna Rogatchi

The exhibition successfully brought to the public a wide spectrum of extremely rich Jewish legacy in Lithuania, from the incunabula of the 15th century  to the rare photos from the 1940s, and from the extremely rare sculpture of the early 17th centuries to the correspondence of Marc Chagall and his family with YIVO, which he treated with a warm, special and intimate attention. 

But as in any art exhibition, not to speak about the one on display in the museum which specialises in paintings, original artworks are the heart of the matter. 

Authentic Greetings from the Ecole de Vitebsk: Mane-Katz and Messenlblum

Ironic Twist of History

For many years, before, during and after the Second World War, both the artists of the Ecole de Paris and their works were subjected to an unjust suffering, starting from an idiotic anti-Semitic contempt and finishing with abruptly broken lives, many brutally, all tragically. 

Initially, the term the Ecole de Paris invented by a marginal, even for his time,  French art critic Andre Warnod,  was a barely veiled mark of contempt, and also an openly xenophobic marker of  ‘those, not our ( French), those Jews ( mostly)’ line of thought which was on a rise in Europe in a sick and twisted post-Versaille world a century ago. 

Jacub Messenblum (C). Paris Street. Drawings collection. The YIVO archive. (C) Inna Rogatchi (C).

As it happened, this small  journalist character was treated by the history with an unmistaken irony double stamp: his name is known just to a few keen art historians, solely due to the fact that he did coin now fanous term, plus the name itself, the Ecole de Paris, has become a fully respectful recognition of bright and original talent of Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine and the other members of the group. The mediocre journalist  knew the only thing about these outstanding people: that they were foreigners and worse, Jews. 

In the history of art, there are very few cases when the intentions and meaning of a new term  applied to an art school, a group of artists, or direction in art landed completely upside down, as happened with The Ecole de Paris. 

What is not widely known is that Warnod’s anti-Semitism was not casual, fleeting, or even fashionable, as there were some occurrences  of that in France in the 1930s. In fact, his anti-Semitism was rooted deeply and was connected to the group of vicious racists from the  Russian imperial family and the leadership of the White Cossacks, the worst of them. 

As it happened, a small French journalist who tried to label the group of superbly talented artists, mostly of them being Litvaks, himself was working for and kept close connection for life to the Russian Tsar’s military attache in France colonel Dmitry Osnobishin who believed that he was an artist,  and ‘far better than those Chagalls from the Pale of Settlement’, in his own imagination. Moreover, colonel Osnobishin was a loyal lieutenant to both father and son counts Romanovsky, grandson and great-grandson of Russian Emperor Nicolay I, with son, Alexander Romanovsky being also a great-grandson of another Russian Emperor Pavel I, on his mother’s side. Alexander Romanovsky was known as a vile anti-Semite, who commanded one of the count Platov’s, another sworn anti-Semite, regiment of the White Cossacks. 

The sentiment which was more than a sentiment, but a sworn belief and brutal practices of the fierce racism and anti-Semitism, was overwhelming in this part of the Russian imperial military that emigrated to France after the revolution in Russia. Andre Warnod’s patron count Osnobishin lived in France from yet a decade before the revolution, until his death in the mid-1950s, the same time when Warnod himself passed away. 

Tellingly, in Paris, Osnobishin founded a circle of literatties and some artists, who were preoccupied with kinky exercises. Andre Warnod was an active member of the group until his and his patron’s deaths.  

What is also ironic is that the French journalist who aimed to publicly contempt by the term The Ecole de Paris the group of unwelcomed in the White Cossacks drunken circles talented Jewish artists, did not get, due to his organic marginality, the core point of his failure: for Chagall, Soutine, Kikoine, Zadkine, Kremegne, Kisling and anyone else from that group, Paris meant only things positive. For all of them, Paris embodied vibrant heights, freedom, a feast of colour, the world of art, and the place in which their inner world which was blossoming, like it some local mediocre vulgar scriber and his vilely anti-Semitic Russian bosses or not. 

In fact, the Litvak and some other Jewish and non-Jewish artists who found themselves in Paris in the 1920s, were quite content with naming them ‘The Ecole de Paris”. Their dreams came through, and their universal talent became known and visible not in Voronezh, but in Paris. 

Jacub Messenblum. Paris Streets. Collection of drawings. The YIVO collection. (C) Inna Rogatchi

It worth of noting that due to the origin of their all mighty, versatile, warm, exuberant and unconventional talent, due to the soul of it, the Ecole de Paris is in fact should be called as the Ecole de Vitebsk, as it was once put by my husband, Jewish artist himself,  Michael, Rogatchi, some years ago in his paper at the very productive and special international symposium at the Diaspora Studies Centre of the Tel-Aviv University, Crossroads of Remembrance: Art and Humanism After the Holocaust, and as it has become a valid in its own right an art historian definition ever since. 

Expressive Nostalgia and Nostalgic Expressiveness

The exhibition in Vilnius has brought to the public a warm and authentic message from this Ecole de Vitebsk, the works of the Litvak  artists who were living and working in Paris before the Second World War, and who were full members of the Ecole de Paris, Emmanuel Mane-Katz and Jacob Messelblum. 

Emmanuel Mane-Katz’s bright and expressive small Rabbi in Yellow, is exhibited on loan from the Vilna Gaon Museum’s collection, and the Rabbi there is as if dances upon you from the wall, bringing the essence of the Ecole de Paris – and Vitebsk , the soulful art, full of nostalgia, and in the case of Mane-Katz, energised memories. 

Emmanuel Mane-Katz (C). Rabbi in Yellow. The Vilna Gaon Museum. (C) Inna Rogatchi

In an interesting development, the trajectory of  life of this artist born in Kremenchug in the end of the 19th century, was incredibly similar to the trajectory of life of Marc Chagall. Young Mane-Katz travelled to Paris  just before the First World War at the same time and approximately the same age as Chagall. For the same reasons, he had to return home, as Chagall, with the start of the war. Following the revolution in 1917, Mane-Katz also was teaching art at his home place, as Chagall did at his. As soon as he possibly could,  in 1921, Mane-Katz left Bolshevik Russia to return to Paris, as Chagall did at his first opportunity several years later. In the end of the 1920s, Mane-Katz visited Palestine, as Chagall did just  three years after, and loved the Eretz Israel deeply, as Chagall did. Before the Second World War, Mane-Katz also visited Poland and Lithuania, and perhaps, he was in Vilnius at the same time with Chagall in 1937 ( this is to be established in more detail, but they both visited Vilnius in the same year, if not for the same events and reasons). 

Public at the opening of the YIVO commemorative exhibition at the Vilnius Picture Gallery. March 2025. (C) Inna Rogatchi

During the Second World War, Mane-Katz was deprived of his recently obtained French citizenship, in the same way and time as Chagall and his family were. In the same way, Mane-Katz was on the run for his life from France, eventually reached New York and spent the years of the Second World War there, returning to France on his first opportunity and at the same time, a bit earlier than Chagall. While on the run, Mane-Katz was arrested by the Vichy authorities in Royan, but managed to escape. Chagall was very near to be arrested in Nice, as well, and escaped the arrest by a miracle. It is amazing to see these paralleled trajectories of the lives of two Litvak artists, whose way of life was so remarkably identical  in so many instances. 

If Emmanuel Mane-Katz, who, towards the end of his life, repatriated to Israel  and whose legacy there blossoms in his personal museum in Haifa and several  other major collections, was very well-known yet during his life-time and thereafter, the destiny of the other Litvak artist Jacub Messenblum whose works are displayed at the exhibition in Vilnius, is much more obscured and unhappy, sadly. 

Jacub Messenblum. Jewish scenes. Drawings collection. The YIVO Archive. (C) Inna Rogatchi

Messenblum, who was born in the same year as Manet-Katz, in Vilnius, lived a rather short and unhappy life. He was virtually unknown or very little known in Lithuania, and worked more as a teacher of art there in Kaunas, where one of the great later masters of  the Litvak school Arbit Blatas was one of his students. Later on, being unhappy, and in hope to get his art to be seen and recognised, Messenblum moved to Paris where he spent the last decade of his life, from 1924 to 1933. It was at that time when he changed his name to Jacque Missine. Becoming gravely ill with tuberculosis, Messenbum decided to return home, where he died shortly. 

What is really tragic with regard to this soulful and aspiring Litvak artist is that not only his works – and he worked fervently while in Paris – are dispersed and are not catalogued, but even to the experts on the Litvak art, their whereabouts is still a mystery. A real drama. 

Just one, but so very beautiful work of Messenblum was exhibited in Vilnius recently, at the landmark exhibition of the Litvak art there in 2023. I wrote about it, and that work was shining among very many superb works, getting a warm attention of everyone visiting, both due to its superb quality, and also due to the fact that it was the work of the artist, almost nothing of whose legacy has been exhibited, published or known. I remember  that the curator of that great exhibition, an established authority on the Litvak art Dr Vilma Gradinskaite, has told me how much she hoped that “ more of Messenblum’s works would be possible to discover and to show to the public. He really is the case of such an unjust, dramatic destiny, and such a good artist”. 

Therefore, when the curators of the current exhibition at the Vilnius Picture Gallery, working on their task while in New York, in a warm, friendly and fruitful cooperation with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research team, found about a dozen of works of Messenblum among the extraordinary YIVO archive and collection, they were especially happy. “ It felt as a real discovery, and as a happy reunion for us at the same time, – the director of the Vilnius Picture Gallery Aiste Bimbiryte and the curator Gabija Kasparaviciute-Kaminskiene told me, with their eyes beaming, and their faces smiling happily. – We are so happy to bring this artist in particular, Jacub Messenblum, back to his native country, we are so happy that not one, but several of his expressive, sharp, dynamic works are here for people to see it for the very first time in 90 years, we are so happy to bring him home”. 

The curators also very graciously decided to produce these re-discovered works of Jacub Messenblum, who died almost a century ago,  in 1933, being just 39, as the series of the art cards representing the  entire exhibition. This understanding , this attitude and these deeds did really feel special to me. 

Selection of Jacub Messemblum works at the YIVO commemorative exhibition at the Vilnius Picture Gallery. (C) Gintare Grigenaite. LNDM.

I always knew, and am working for years on various implementations of the understanding that art is probably the best, or the best along with literature,  instrument for memory, and it is special indeed, because it acts on its own level, different from an intellectual component which is central to literature. Art works  directly on the level of emotions which often are not quite rational and which acts immediately, on a subconscious level. Art speaks to the heart. Or it does not. 

In the halls of the Vilnius Picture Gallery displaying the YIVO commemorative exhibition, the part of the wall dedicated to the re-discovered and brought from a total obscurity works of Jacub Messenblum, talks volumes. 

Previous parts of this reviewing essay series: 

Part I – General View and the Concept –  https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/re-creating-the-path-of-remembrance-yivo-celebration-in-vilnius/

Part II – Artefacts and Documents – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/spiral-of-time-retrospective-of-yiddish-heritage-in-vilnius/

Part III – Rare Book and Manuscripts – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-letters-of-time-lives-and-spirit/

Part IV – When Art is a History Marker: Historical Art and Rare Sculpture at the YIVO commemorative exhibition in Vilnius –  https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/when-art-is-a-history-marker-yivo-commemorative-exhibition-in-vilnius/

March – April 2025, Vilnius

IR ©. 

You Shall Not Make an Image. Commandments, Daily Life and Change exhibition at the Vilnius Picture Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania. March 5 – September 14, 2025.