After). The Divorce (Get).

Yehuda (Yuri Moiseevitch) Pen (1854-1937) was one of the most significant artists representative of the Jewish Renaissance in Russian and Belarusian art at the beginning of 20th century. Pen established a celebrated school of art in Vitebsk, where his pupils included Chagall, Lissitzky and Ossip Zadkine. The vast majority of Pen’s extant works are extant in the Belarus National Museum of Art in Minsk and the Vitebsk Museum of Art. The present canvas “The Get” was commissioned by an American businessman during the course of multiple visits to the Soviet Union during the 1970’s and 1980’s (as were the next two lots). Pen’s original painting, completed in 1907, presently hangs in the Vitebsk Museum of Art. See G. Kasovsky, Masterpieces of Jewish Art: Artists from Vitebsk-Yehuda Pen and his Pupils (Moscow, 1995).