Object numberM2008/077:011
Creator Ilya Schor (artist)
DescriptionWoodblock print depicting their Jewish neighbourhood in New York. Part of a set of 12 illustrations from Sholem Aleichem's Adventures of Mottel: The Cantor's Son. Signed by IIya Schor in pencil at the lower right corner and numbered 32/75 in the lower left. Young mothers with infants sit and gossip on front steps of tenements. Every window advertises the schmatta (garment) business, a young boy sells newspapers, grocers and street vendors ply their trade. Rubbish strewn everywhere. A boy on his bicycle rides past, cap worn backwards - a real American. No longer an immigrant from the shtetl.
IIya Schor
Born: 16 April 1904 - Died: 7 June 1961; aged: 57
A native of Galicia, talented painter, jeweler, engraver, and book illustrator
Works are held in the Metropolitan Museum (MOMA) in New York; the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem; and the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM)
IIya Schor was born as Izrael Schor to Neftali Schor, a Hasidic folk artist, and his wife, Krajdla. He was raised in a religious Hasidic family in the shtetl of Zloczow. The shtetl changed its national affiliation several times from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Poland, and, currently, the Ukraine, where it is now referred to as Zolochiv. The character of the shtetl's Jewish community is suffused with Hasidic traditions established by the mystic and sage Yehi'el Mikhl of Zolochiv in the eighteenth century.
In 1930 IIya enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw to study painting. Here he fell in love with the young artist Resia Ainstein (1910-2006). In 1937 he received a grant to study in the French capital. In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, they married. In May 1940, to evade the Nazi net, they fled Paris for Marseille. Where, like thousands of other Jewish refugees, they became stranded. But, thanks to the interventions of the Vice-Consul of the United States Harry Bingham, an American journalist Varian Fry and a guarantee from Schor's older brother Abraham, they received visas at the last minute.
Though the last two decades of IIya Schor's life -a period of great creative flourishing - were spent in New York on the upper east side, it was as if he had never left Zloczow, the place of his youth. The lost world of Jewish life, the small shtetls of Galicia became a constant theme in his work. Among his work is a series of illustrations made in 1953 for the publication of Sholem Aleichem's The Adventures of Mottel: The Cantor's Son. The story unfolds on the cusp of the twentieth century and follows the fate of Mottel the cantor's son and his family. After the death of his father, Mottel and his family leave their shtetl Kasrilovska and emigrate to America - Di Goldene Medine - like thousands of other Eastern European Jews. The book written in the mischievous and irrepressible voice of young Mottel.
Another set of illustrations that Schor completed was for Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's book, The Earth is the Lord's. Once again, the illustrations are reminiscent of Schor's nostalgia for the destroyed world of his childhood and youth. Dr. Sergey Kravtsov from the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem describes Schor's creativity as a search for a "Jewish style" within expressionism. "It's closer to Chagallism" he writes and maintains that "Galician-Jewish artists of the time were more likely to run away from the shtetls than be touched by them. IIya Schor's nostalgic view is turned away from the post-Holocaust world toward the past."
In Zolochiv, where fewer than 90 people of the 9,000 strong Jewish community survived a succession of pogroms carried out by neighbours and other enthusiastic Ukrainians - all Schor's relatives and friends were slaughtered. There were no deportations to concentration or death camps. The Great Synagogue and the Beit-Midrash, the Jewish study hall, were reduced to rubble and obliterated as was the Jewish cemetery where Schor's father had been buried. According to artist and writer, Mira Schor, therefore in his scenes of the shtetls, her father conveys Jewish life with great warmth - an expression of nostalgia and pain for all that has been lost.
IIya Schor
Born: 16 April 1904 - Died: 7 June 1961; aged: 57
A native of Galicia, talented painter, jeweler, engraver, and book illustrator
Works are held in the Metropolitan Museum (MOMA) in New York; the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem; and the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM)
IIya Schor was born as Izrael Schor to Neftali Schor, a Hasidic folk artist, and his wife, Krajdla. He was raised in a religious Hasidic family in the shtetl of Zloczow. The shtetl changed its national affiliation several times from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Poland, and, currently, the Ukraine, where it is now referred to as Zolochiv. The character of the shtetl's Jewish community is suffused with Hasidic traditions established by the mystic and sage Yehi'el Mikhl of Zolochiv in the eighteenth century.
In 1930 IIya enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw to study painting. Here he fell in love with the young artist Resia Ainstein (1910-2006). In 1937 he received a grant to study in the French capital. In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, they married. In May 1940, to evade the Nazi net, they fled Paris for Marseille. Where, like thousands of other Jewish refugees, they became stranded. But, thanks to the interventions of the Vice-Consul of the United States Harry Bingham, an American journalist Varian Fry and a guarantee from Schor's older brother Abraham, they received visas at the last minute.
Though the last two decades of IIya Schor's life -a period of great creative flourishing - were spent in New York on the upper east side, it was as if he had never left Zloczow, the place of his youth. The lost world of Jewish life, the small shtetls of Galicia became a constant theme in his work. Among his work is a series of illustrations made in 1953 for the publication of Sholem Aleichem's The Adventures of Mottel: The Cantor's Son. The story unfolds on the cusp of the twentieth century and follows the fate of Mottel the cantor's son and his family. After the death of his father, Mottel and his family leave their shtetl Kasrilovska and emigrate to America - Di Goldene Medine - like thousands of other Eastern European Jews. The book written in the mischievous and irrepressible voice of young Mottel.
Another set of illustrations that Schor completed was for Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's book, The Earth is the Lord's. Once again, the illustrations are reminiscent of Schor's nostalgia for the destroyed world of his childhood and youth. Dr. Sergey Kravtsov from the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem describes Schor's creativity as a search for a "Jewish style" within expressionism. "It's closer to Chagallism" he writes and maintains that "Galician-Jewish artists of the time were more likely to run away from the shtetls than be touched by them. IIya Schor's nostalgic view is turned away from the post-Holocaust world toward the past."
In Zolochiv, where fewer than 90 people of the 9,000 strong Jewish community survived a succession of pogroms carried out by neighbours and other enthusiastic Ukrainians - all Schor's relatives and friends were slaughtered. There were no deportations to concentration or death camps. The Great Synagogue and the Beit-Midrash, the Jewish study hall, were reduced to rubble and obliterated as was the Jewish cemetery where Schor's father had been buried. According to artist and writer, Mira Schor, therefore in his scenes of the shtetls, her father conveys Jewish life with great warmth - an expression of nostalgia and pain for all that has been lost.
Production placeUnited States
Production date circa 1950
SubjectPre-war life, yiddishkeit, art
Object nameprints
Dimensions
- frame width: 260.00 mm
frame height: 340.00 mm
Language
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection