Portrait of a Jew.

Ryback was born in Yelizavetgrad, Ukraine. He attended the Art Academy in Kiev from 1911-16 and was an important contributor to the Kiev art scene until 1921 when he moved to Berlin to participate in the historically important Berlin Secession exhibit. In 1926 he settled in Paris, dying there on the eve of a major retrospective exhibition of his work organized by Wildenstein. Ryback was an important member of the Russian-Jewish, modernist movement that included Lissitsky, Altman, Aronson and Chagall, all of whom were seeking to revitalize Jewish art during a period which saw the cultural efflorescence of Yiddish literature, music, theater, and art. See H. Kazovsky, The Artists of the Kultur Lige (Moscow, 2003) pp. 230-48.