Life in the Shtetl

Shtetl, Mayn Khoyever heym; a gedenknish
(Shtetl, My destroyed home; A Remembrance)

by Issachar Ryback, 1897-1935.
Verlag Schwellen: Berlin, 1922.

There are 30 lithographic plates (including two title pages) in this volume that was printed as edition 250. It is described in an Israel Museum exhibition catalogue, Tradition and Revolution: The Jewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-Garde Art, 1912-1928, edited by Ruth Apter-Gabriel. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1987. In this book, the artist depicts scenes of Jewish life in his shtetl in Ukraine before it was destroyed in the pogroms that followed the end of World War I. Ryback drew and painted many of the same subjects favored by Chagall in his early years and a comparison may be made between the two. This is certainly true of Ryback's series of drawings of shtetl life.