THE MAGNES COLLECTION OF JEWISH ART AND LIFE

THE BANCROFT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

2121 ALLSTON WAY, BERKELEY, CA 94704
510.643.2526 MAGNES.ORG
In 2014, The Magnes acquired twelve works by the New York Times-featured Ukrainian artist,
Matvey Vaisberg, including the portraits of eight Russian Jewish authors.
Several of the authors portrayed by Vaisberg were Yiddish writers murdered by the Soviet
regime on August 12, 1952: Itzik Feffer, Leib Kvitko, Peretz Markish, and David Hofstein. Other
portraits include prominent writers such as Sh. Aleichem (1859-1916), O. Mandelstam (1891-
1938), B. Pasternak (1890-1960), and J. Brodsky (1940-1996).
These unusual works, painted on cardboard in the late 1980s, and based on archival
photographic sources, reclaimed a suppressed cultural heritage on the eve of the fall of the
Soviet Union.
Matvey Vaisberg, the grandson of the Yiddish author, Motl D. Gartsman (1909-1943), was born
in 1958, and lives and works in Kiev, Ukraine.
The exhibition also includes biographical profiles of the authors, and poignant literary excerpts.
Curators: Francesco Spagnolo and Eli Rosenblatt (PhD Candidate, Jewish Studies; Magnes Graduate Fellow 2013-2014)
LITERARY

MINDS
Soviet Jewish writers portrayed by
MATVEY VAI SBERG
The Magnes | Fall Exhibitions 2014
ON VIEW: August 28-December 19, 2014