Oyf di Yiddisher Feld fun Ukraina [“On the Jewish Fields of the Ukraine.”]

RYBACK, ISSACHAR BER

Paris

1926

ONE OF ONLY 50 NUMBERED COPIES SIGNED BY THE ARTIST. Text in Yiddish. Twenty-one color plates.

Ryback had once described the “national element” of the Jewish artist as preferring deep, dark tones: “Whenever color is bright, the Jewish artist turns it down.” Following his sojourn among Ukraine’s Jewish collective-farms (kolkhozes), Ryback found the means to reverse his theories (viz. introduction): “To me, who grew up in the Pale amid the wan, worn out faces, the healthy, sun-burnt, wind-beaten men and women were a perfect joy and indeed revealed to me new colors.”