Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan

Anatoli (Tankhum) Lvovich Kaplan ( _ru. Анатолий Львович Каплан), (December 26 1902 in Rogachev, Belarus- July 3, 1980 in Leningrad) was a Russian painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose works often reflect his Jewish origins.

Life

Kaplan one was one of six children; his father was a butcher in Rogachev which was at that time within the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia. His background was therefore not dissimilar to that of Marc Chagall, born a generation earlier in 1887, and although their lifes were very different, their art has much in common. The shtetl figures in many of Kaplan's paintings - autobiographical references are very clear in "The Butcher's Shop" (1972) and "Tailor's Shops" (1975) and in the many illustrations which he was to create to the works of Sholom Aleichem.

Around 1922 Kaplan came to Leningrad (then named Petrograd), where he was to base his career for the rest of his life, although he often revisited the towns of his childhood. He graduated in 1927 from the Russian Academy of Arts there.

In the 1930s he became associated with a group of artists and lithographers in Leningrad which had been instructed to prepare a series of works dedicated to the remote Jewish Autonomous Oblast, being created by Stalin in the hope of resettling Russia's Jewish population in a remote area in the Far East of the country. Here Kaplan learnt and took to the skills of printmaking, developing many individual techniques. His first cycle of prints (1937-1940) was entitled "Kasrilevka", (the name of the village invented by Sholom Aleichem).

During the war Kaplan was at first evacuated to the Urals, but returned to Leningrad in 1944. His lithograph cycle of "Landscapes of Leningrad during the Days of the Blockade" (1948) was widely acclaimed in Russia and was purchased by eighteen State galleries.

At one time Kaplan was supervisor of design in a glassware factory and this gave him an interest in the third dimension which was later to blossom in his ceramics and sculptures.

From the 1950s onwards Kaplan's artworks concentrated on Jewish themes, despite constant and often serious opposition and obstruction from the Soviet cultural authorities. Amongst these works should be mentioned his cover and illustrations to the "Jewish Folksongs" of Dmitri Shostakovich(1977) , illustrations to Aleichem's "Tevye the Milkman" (3 series, 1957-1966), "The Enchanted Tailor" (1954-57) and "Song of Songs" (1962), and a magnificent series of coloured lithographs (printed in London in 1961) on the old Jewish Passover song "Chad Gadya" ("One Kid Goat"). Throughout this time Kaplan was also producing paintings though in view of their subject matter they were rarely displayed in the Russia of his time. From 1967 onward he began also to produce ceramics and sculptures, including a remarkable set based on the characters of Gogol's "Dead Souls".

Exhibitions

A substantial retrospective exhibition of Kaplan's work was held at the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, in 1995. Other major exhibitions have been held in New York (1992), London, Amsterdam, Jerusalem and elsewhere.

References

*"Anatoli L. Kaplan: Variationen zu jiddischen Volksliedern", int. Beate Jahn-Zechendorff (Leipzig, 1976)
*"Anatoli L. Kaplan: Das zeichnersiche Werk 1928 bis 1977", ed. Juri Kuznezow (Leipzig, 1979)
*"Anatoli L. Kaplan:Keramik", ed. Klaus G. Beyer, (Berlin, 1977)
*"Anatoly Kaplan" (catalogue of exhibition at Russian Museum; 2 vols.) (Pub. Josef Kiblitsky, St. Petersburg, 1995). ISBN 3-930775-01-8. Book text in English, German and Russian. See [http://www.amazon.de/Anatoly-Kaplan-Malerei-Graphik-Skulptur/dp/3930775018 book details] at German Amazon.

External links

* [http://www.ibiblio.org/yiddish/Kaplan/ Photograph of Kaplan and book illustrations by him.]