Issachar Ber Ryback (Ukrainian, 1897–1935)

Miryam Margolin, Mayselekh far kleyninke kinderlekh (Little tales for little children). [Petrograd]: Yidishe sektsye bam komisariat far folkbildung, 1922
Above: Design for the book cover, c. 1922
India ink and gouache on paper, 9 3/4 x 13 3/4” (27 x 35 cm)
Merrill C. Berman Collection
Below: A selection of illustrations
Each: letterpress, 8 7/16 x 9 3/4” (21.4 x 27.8 cm)
Galerie Le Minotaure, Paris

Issachar Ber Ryback (Ukrainian, 1897–1935) was a founding member of the Arts Section of the Kultur-Lige (Culture League), an organization established in Kyiv in 1918 to promote Yiddish culture as a modern, secular identity. During his studies at the Kyiv Art School, Ryback, together with his classmate Boris Aronson, was awakened to the vocabulary of modernism in the studio of Alexandra Exter. Under the auspices of the Kultur-Lige, the two young artists sought to combine contemporary, avant-garde syntax with that of traditional Jewish imagery, then being actively studied and preserved via expeditions sponsored by the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society. In a Kultur-Lige publication of 1919, Ryback and Aronson summarized their view that: “Pure abstract form is precisely what embodies the national [ethnic Jewish] element. Only via the principle of abstract painting, free of any literariness, can the expression of one’s own national foundation be achieved.”

All works Merrill C. Berman Collection unless otherwise noted.

Cover of the book Leyb Kvitko, In vald (In the forest).
Berlin: Farlag Shveln, c. 1920
Linocut, 9 1/8 x 12 1/4” (23.2 x 31.1 cm)

Study for the painting Alef Bet (Alphabet), 1918–1919
Gouache, tempera, brush and ink over pencil on paper,
15 3/4 x 10 5/8” (40 x 27 cm)

Left: Cover design for the Yiddish literary review Eygns (To One’s Self), 1919
India ink on paper, 10 1/4 x 6 5/8” (26 x 17 cm)
Right: Design for table of contents of Eygns (To One’s Self), 1919
India ink on paper, 10 1/4 x 6 5/8” (26 x 17 cm)

Issachar Ber Ryback, Shtetl (Shtetl). Berlin: Shveln, 1923
Top: Book cover. Lithograph on paper, 13 1/4 x 19 1/2” (33.7 x 49.5 cm)
Bottom: Design for the frontispiece, Mayn horever heym: a gedekhenish
(My home destroyed, a memory), c. 1923
Graphite on paper, 13 x 17 5/8” (33 x 44.8 cm)
Below: A selection of illustrations
Each: Lithograph, 13 1/4 x 19 1/2” (33.7 x 49.5 cm)

Stage design for the Kultur-Lige (Culture League), c. 1925
Lithograph, 12 1/2 x 18 7/8” (32 x 48 cm)

Left: Cover of the book Issachar Ber Ryback, Oyf di yidishe felder fun Ukrayne (In the Jewish fields of Ukraine).
Paris: A. Simon and Company, 1926
Lithograph and letterpress, 15 1/4 x 11 1/4” (38.1 x 28.6 cm)
Right: Cover of the book Leyb Kvitko, Me shlisṭ oys derfar (One can be expelled for this). Kharkiv: Knihospilka (The Book Union), 1927
Lithograph, 10 x 6 3/4” (25.4 x 17.1 cm)

March 15, 2022