The Moshe Castel Museum of Art in Ma’aleh Adumim has opened a unique exhibition. It consists of works by a Jewish artist whose life was spent almost entirely in the Soviet Union, and yet its target audience is the Israeli public, most of whom have never even been to the former USSR, Russia, or Ukraine. In light of this, I feel it is necessary to briefly explain why the museum chose to introduce this particular artist, Yosef Ostrovsky, to an Israeli audience.
Born in 1935 in the small town of Shepetovka (Shepetivka) in Ukraine, Joseph Meerovich Ostrovsky lived most of his life in Odessa, where he developed not just as an artist but also as a specifically Jewish artist. Some art scholars have sought to demonstrate a connection between Ostrovsky and the Odessa Society of Independent Artists, which was established in 1917. However, it is hard to confirm whether such a connection really existed. Ostrovsky’s artistic development appears to have been influenced less by the Expressionist or Cubist traditions and more by psychological realism.
His paintings from the 1960s and 1970s show the palpable influence of Robert Falk and David Shterenberg. He never belonged to the avant-garde, but his artistic essence is aptly captured by a fitting term recently coined by the prominent Muscovite collector Roman Babichev – “Modernism without a manifesto.”
The life and art of Yosef Ostrovsky
While Ostrovsky lived almost his entire life in the Soviet Union, never engaging in any clandestine socio-political activities, his art transcends space and time. Thus, his paintings A Landscape and Boats (both from 1968), Houses (1970), his self-portraits from 1963 and 1969, and A Landscape (1975) could all have been painted by many of the artists of the École de Paris. Ostrovsky spent a fairly long time searching for his own original plastic language, but his works never betrayed any resemblance to the predominant Social Realist School of Soviet art. However, upon turning 40, 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.
Before the onset of perestroika in 1984, the Moscow office of Sovetish Heymland – the only 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. Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, who visited the Soviet Union for the first time in 1965, coined a phrase that would become very famous: “I went to Russia drawn by the silence of its Jews. I brought back their cry.”
Ostrovsky’s exhibition was such a cry. The very fact that it could be held is a testament to the great strides Ostrovsky had made. The show could not have taken place without at least a decade of prior work. Paintings such as A Wise Man and The Flutist (both dated 1980), The End of the Day and Polemics (both dated 1981), Thirst for Knowledge, Conversation, and The Violinist (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 achieved at this point.
That was 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 was striking. It would not be wrong to say that the Ostrovsky of 1978 showed himself as a skilled portrait and landscape painter, still in search of 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 the apt formulation of Sergei Knyazev, “The artist found a totally new artistic language, which lacks even the slightest hint of pathos – but, to the contrary, strives for the immediacy of a child’s drawing and the simplicity of a parable.”
In addition to being a consummate portraitist who had inherited the best traditions of Rembrandt’s psychological portraiture, Ostrovsky was also an extremely rare example of a Soviet citizen who became a quintessentially Jewish painter. He made no attempt to obfuscate the Jewish identity of his intellectuals or musicians, nor hide the national legacy of the Jewish people. In fact, he put these elements front and center.
The only contemporary who can be compared 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’ identity, which can be determined only by learning the last names and biographies of the individuals depicted by him.
By contrast, 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. He is reminiscent of his illustrious predecessor Rembrandt van Rijn, who, in the mid-17 th century, created a collective portrait of the contemporary Jewish community of Amsterdam – a city that was then the spiritual center of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in which they could openly practice their faith.
This is the reason for the importance and enduring value of Ostrovsky’s art. In the years of 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 more happy years of a high-quality life.” He died in 1993.
The artist spent most of this time in Ma’aleh Adumim, first as a resident, and then as a regular visitor at the home of his daughter, Svetlana. In Israel, Ostrovsky soaked in the new impressions and produced a series of charming landscapes; but, alas, he failed to win the recognition of the local artistic establishment in the brief time left to him. Today, on this wonderful artist’s 90th anniversary, The Moshe Castel Museum is 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 collectors Len Erlikh (Miami), Alexander Smukler (New Jersey), and Miriam and Pinchas Mouryc (Jerusalem) for supporting the publication of an album of Ostrovsky’s work.
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. Ostrovsky’s art was genuine, authentic, and sincere, and it is for this reason that I am convinced that it will continue to resonate for many years to come.
The exhibition is open until January 12, 2025.■
Alek D. Epstein is curator of The Moshe Castel Museum of Art in Ma’aleh Adumim.