Felix Lembersky

Felix Lembersky (November 11,1913 – December 2,1970) was a Russian/Soviet/Jewish painter.

Felix Lembersky was born at a time and place where a sequence of historic events put him at an epicenter of violent turmoil. He was still an infant in Lublin, Poland when World War I began and spread to that region. His family ran to Berdichev, Ukraine; the war followed them. After World War I, there came Russian Revolution of 1917 and then the Civil war along with violent outbursts against Jews. In the early 1930s, when Lembersky lived and studied in Kiev, there was a famine during collectivization. Less than a decade later, Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Union; Lembersky again lived through the famine that took lives of nearly a million during the Siege of Leningrad. His parents perished in Holocaust. After the war, the Soviet Union for the most part maintained the policy of silence regarding Jewish massacres. Lembersky’s first experience with arts was working on stage designs first in Berdichev and later in Kiev Drama Theater in the 1920s and 1930s. During that time he became acquainted with art of avant-garde and Jewish theatre; these influences later appear in his work. He studied painting at KulturLiga Art College (1927), Kiev Art Institute (1933-1934) and the Academy of Arts in Leningrad (1935-1941) under the direction of Boris Ioganson. He completed his studies and graduated during the Siege of Leningrad in December 1941. Between 1942 and 1944, Lembersky worked as an artist-journalist in the Urals, cities of Sverdlovsk and Nizhny Tagil—at the mines and plants of the war industry. In Nizhny Tagil he organized an art studio for novice artists, a Union of Artists, and an art gallery that would become Nizhny Tagil Art Museum.

Lembersky returned to Leningrad in 1944. He was a member of LOSKh (Leningrad chapter of Union of Artists) since 1944; he taught at Tavricheskii Art College (Serov Art College) for several years in the 1940s, and in following years he worked on state commissions and paintings of his own choice.

“Execution. Babii Yar,” “The Revolution 1917,” “Fuchik Trilogy,” “The Miners of the Urals,” are among the commissioned work he did in the 1940s and 1950s. “Leaders with Children,” are the series of three paintings made for the Leningrad Palace of Young Pioneers (Anichkov Palace); adding a personal and subtly Jewish touch in one of the paintings, a girl, modeled after his daughter, talks to comrade Zhdanov holding a violin. He created a series of portraits and landscapes of small towns near Leningrad; many of these landscapes portray abandoned religious structures that fell victim to communist persecution. While the works from that period generally conform to Socialist Realism, Lembersky began to question the place of workers, Jews and spirituality in his society. During the Khrushchev Thaw at the end of the 1950s, Lembersky began to experiment with color and pictorial perspective, effectively moving away from realism and academism. In 1960, Lembersky exhibited his new work that attracted praise from some critics as “a breath of air after years of artistic stagnation.”

In 1962, Khruschev ended liberal policies of the thaw. non-conformist art was suppressed. The official critics characterized Lembersky’s work as "formalism" and censored it from public view. The resulting isolation, in effect, liberated Lembersky to move further away from realism toward abstraction and symbolism. His art became polychromatic compositions structured as a stage set, or, in the artist’s words, as interconnected “layers.” A recognizable image in the “first layer”, such as a landscape, is composed of other images-symbols from everyday life, Russian history, Torah and New Testament. In his paintings “Railway Pointer,” “Household Store,” “Midday. Crucifixion,” and “Refugees” Lembersky commemorated the people who made an imprint on the earth by showing their silhouettes in the forms of a landscape. Through symbols, he showed the repetition of history and symmetry between modern day and biblical times. Despite the rift with official establishment he considered his work Socialist Realism as he devoted it to lives of ordinary people of his day and expressed the truth, as he understood it in the context of the 20th century.

He died in 1970 in Leningrad. His wife immigrated to the United States in 1980; she took his art collection out of the Soviet Union before it could be exhibited there. As a result most of his work have not been shown in the country of its origin.

Museums and Private Collections

State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Museum of the Ilya Repin Academic Institute. St. Petersburg, Russia.

Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey.

Museum of Political History of Russia, St Petersburg, Russia.

Museum of Defense of Leningrad, St Petersburg, Russia.

Palace of Pioneers, St Petersburg, Russia.

Museum of Art, Yekaterinburg, Russia.

State Museum of Fine Art, Nizhnii, Tagil, Russia.

Private collections in USA, Russia, and Israel.

References

Maleeva, L. P., et al. The Nizhny Tagil Museum-Reserve. Sverdlovsk, Russia: Sredne-Uralskoe Knizhnoe Isatelstvo, 1988.

Shaginian, Marietta. Ural literature and art. Vol. 9. Sobranie sochinenii /Complete Anthology. 9 Vols. Moscow, Russia: Khudozhestvennaia Literature, 1989.

Falik Lemberski. The Jewish News. May 19, 1989. Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Falik Lemberski. The Jewish News. July 15, 1988. Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Falik Lemberski: Sylwetki malarzy. Folks-sztyme. December 13, 1969. Nr. 50(3930).

Falik Lembersky. Soviet Homeland. 1963.

Avantgardni tradici Sovetsckeho umeni. Sovetske vytvarne umeni. Czech Republic, Trutnov: OV SCSP, 1962.

Zimenko, V. M., A. I. Leonov, et al. Isobrazitelnoe Iskusstvo v godi Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voini. (Visual Arts in the years of Great Patriotic War). Moscow, Russia: Isdatelstvo Akademii Khudozhestv SSSR, 1951.

Lembersky, Falik et al. Nizhnii Tagil: Gift Album to I. V. Stalin. Moscow, Russia: Defense Committee, USSR. 1944.300px

Dekada Iskusstva Urala. Literatura i Iskusstvo. Fall, 1942.

Schaginjan, Marietta. ÒIskusstvo segodniashnego Urala. Literatura i Iskusstvo. 19 December, 1942.

Globe. Kiev, Ukraine: Proletaraskaia Pravda, 1933.

External links

* [http://www.lembersky.org www.lembersky.org]