Shtetl. Mayn Chorever Heym, a Gedeknish [“My Destroyed Home. A Memorial”]

Provenance: Samuel Willig, Esq. Acquired directly from the Artist in Paris. Consigned to auction by a family-member Boldly inscribed in English by Ryback: “With Greetings of the Artist. Paris. September 11, 1929. I. Ryback.” Following the retreat of Ukranian Nationalist forces from the Russian Red Army in 1919, mass killings of Jews took place. One such pogrom broke out in Ryback’s birthplace, Yelizavetgrad (presently, Kirovograd), in which his father was killed. This profound series of lithographs portrays the ravaged Shtetl and expresses the artist’s grief for a world abandoned and now destroyed. See Israel Museum Catalogue, Tradition and Revolution: The Jewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-Garde Art 1912-1928 (1987) no.136 i-xxx (illustrated); and Jüdische Lebenswelten Katalog, Berlin (1991) no.7/25 (illustrated)