Shtetl. Mein Choruver Heim: A Gedekenish [“My Destroyed Home: A Memorial.”]

RYBACK, ISSACHAR BER.

Verlag Schwellen

Berlin

1923

30 tinted and black-and-white lithographs (including title) numbered III-XXXI, all complete.

Following the retreat of Ukrainian Nationalist forces before the Russian Red Army in 1919, mass killings of Jews occurred. One such pogrom took place in Ryback’s birthplace, Yelizavetgrad (presently, Kropyvnytskyi), killing his father. This moving series of lithographs portrays the ravaged Shtetl and expresses the artist’s grief for a world he abandoned and was subsequently destroyed. See Israel Museum Catalogue, Tradition and Revolution: The Jewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-Garde Art 1912-1928 (1987), no.136 i-xxx (illustrated); Jüdische Lebenswelten Katalog, Berlin (1991), no.7/25 (illustrated).