Jewish Sound and Soul: From Odessa to Maale Adumim.
An Exhibition of Artworks by Yosef Ostrovsky (1935–1993)
Self-Portrait, 1963
Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, 1973
Svetlana, 1969
An Elder, 1990
A Jew with a New Book, 1987
A Girl with a Book, 1973
A Wise Man, 1980
Conversation, 1985
Polemics, 1981
Violinist, 1984
Violist, 1983
Inspiration, 1985
Yosef Ostrovsky was born in 1935 in the small town of Shepetovka (Shepetivka) in Ukraine, but lived most of his life in Odessa. Some art scholars have sought to demonstrate a connection between Yosef Ostrovsky and the Odessa Society of Independent Artists, which was established in 1917; it is hard to say whether such a connection really existed; Ostrovsky’s artistic development appears to have been influenced less by the Expressionist or Cubist traditions than by psychological realism, and his paintings from the 1960s and 1970s show the palpable influence of Robert Falk and David Shterenberg. While Yosef Ostrovsky lived almost his entire life in the Soviet Union, never engaging in any clandestine sociopolitical activities, his art essentially transcends space and time. Thus, his paintings A Landscape and Boats (both from 1968), his self-portraits from 1963 and 1969, his Houses (1970), or A Landscape (1975), could all have been painted by many of the artists of the so-called École de Paris. Yosef Ostrovsky spent a fairly long time searching for his own original plastic language, yet his works never betrayed any resemblance to the predominant Social Realist school of Soviet art. However, upon turning forty Ostrovsky embarked on a new stage in his career, which would eventually launch him into the ranks of the few true masters whose works are almost instantly recognizable, even when unsigned.
Before the onset of the perestroika, in 1984, the Moscow office of Sovetish Heymland – the sole legal periodical published in a Jewish language in the USSR – held a solo exhibition of his works, which was accompanied by a publication in the magazine itself. It seems that this was not just another exhibition, but an act of civic heroism. The Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, who visited the Soviet Union for the first time in 1965, coined a phrase that would eventually become very famous: “I went to Russian drawn by the silence of its Jews. I brought back their cry.” Yosef Ostrovsky’s exhibition was just such a cry. The very fact that it could be held is a testament to the great strides made by Ostrovsky in developing this subject; the show could not have taken place without at least a decade of prior work. Paintings such as A Wise Man, The Flutist (both dated 1980), The End of the Day, Polemics (both dated 1981), Thirst for Knowledge, Conversation, and The Violist (all three dated 1983) reflect the lengthy process of observation, reflection, and coming to terms with one’s national-cultural roots, which the artist had already completed by this point.
That was Yosef Ostrovsky’s second exhibition, the first having been held six years previously at the Odessa Museum of Western and Eastern Art, and the difference between the two is striking. It would not be wrong to say that the Ostrovsky of 1978 showed himself a skilled portrait and landscape painter, still in search for his own unique artistic idiom. However, by that time these attributes were just the tip of the iceberg, because of an artistic transformation that was going on within the artist's soul and workshop, a process that was to culminate in the exhibition of 1984.
In addition to being a consummate portraitist, who had inherited the best traditions of Rembrandt’s psychological portraiture, Yosef Ostrovsky was also an extremely rare example of a Soviet citizen who became a Jewish painter. He made no attempt to obfuscate the Jewish identity of his intellectuals or musicians, nor hide the national legacy of our people, – but actually put these elements front and center. The only contemporary who can stand a comparison with Ostrovsky is his colleague, the amazing portraitist Boris Birger (1923–2001), who was active in roughly the same period, and whose canvases add up to a portrait gallery of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia. However, Birger never tried to emphasize his characters’ national identity, which can be determined only by learning the last names and biographies of the individuals depicted by him. By contrast, Yosef Ostrovsky consciously stressed the Jewishness of his subjects, while almost never specifying the identities of his models; in this way, he was able to paint a collective portrait of the Russian-/Ukrainian-Jewish intelligentsia as such. In this, he is reminiscent of his illustrious predecessor Rembrandt van Rijn, who, back in the mid-17th century, had created a collective portrait of the contemporary Jewish community of Amsterdam – a city that was then the spiritual center of the Jewish expellees from Spain and Portugal, where they could openly practice their faith.
This is the reason for the unique importance and enduring value of Yosef Ostrovsky’s art. In the years of Gorbachev’s perestroika, he continued working on his Jewish cycle, without having to make any changes: The paintings The Violinist (1984), A Dreamer (1985), The Cellist and In the Synagogue (both from 1986), A Jew with a New Book (1987), The Violist (1988), The Conversation (1989), An Elder and The Clarinetist (both from 1990) are not fundamentally different from the works of his earlier period; Yosef Ostrovsky had found his artistic voice, and remained loyal to it, regardless of any political transformations or changes of abode.
In December 1989, the artist and his wife, son, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren immigrated to Israel. Unfortunately, he was already terminally ill; according to one of his relatives, “the high hopes placed in the expertise of Israeli physicians were only partially fulfilled. They did manage to give Yosef Ostrovsky four happy years of high-quality life.” The artist spent most of this time in Ma’ale Adumim, first as a resident, and then as a regular visitor at the home of his daughter Svetlana. In Israel, Yosef Ostrovsky soaked in the new impressions and produced a series of charming landscapes; alas, he failed to win the deserved recognition of the local artistic establishment in the brief time left to him. Today, on the eve of this wonderful artist’s 90th anniversary, we are very excited to open the first – but, I firmly believe, not the last – solo exhibition of his works at an Israeli museum. We are sincerely grateful to Ostrovsky’s family for graciously allowing us to exhibit many of the best works from the legacy of this outstanding painter. We are also thankful to the collectors Len Erlikh (Miami, USA) and Miriam and Pinchas Mouryc for supporting the publication of the present album. The name of Yosef Ostrovsky – along with those of Nathan Altman, Robert Falk, Meer Akselrod, Tankhum Kaplan, and the artists of the “Aleph” Group – represents the crowning glory of Russian-/Ukrainian-Jewish art in the 20th century. Yosef Ostrovsky’s art was genuine, authentic, and sincere, and it is for this reason that it will continue to resonate in the hearts of our contemporaries and descendants for many years to come.
Dr. Alek D. Epstein,
Curator, The Moshe Castel Museum of Art in Ma’ale Adumim
