Moshe Rynecki

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Moshe Rynecki (1881-1943) was an artist and painter in Warsaw, Poland in the 1920s and 1930s. He primarily painted scenes of religious Jewish life (e.g. Shemoneh Esreh [1]) but he also painted scenes of everyday life (e.g., men playing chess[2]). He is perhaps most renowned for the paintings he did inside the Warsaw Ghetto.

Rynecki is often described as a "Jewish painter." In a way it is odd to include one's religious tradition with their choice of career, but for Rynecki, and his place in history, this description has meaning and purpose.

Prior to the nineteenth century, Judaism opposed creating and painting images. Seemingly few Jews even recognized painting as a popular pastime. In the mid-nineteenth century, when Jewish artists began to emerge, many vacillated between focusing their art on Jewish experiences and concentrating their artistic energies on more secular themes. Many Jewish artists struggled between trying to see themselves as contemporary and assimilated, while also trying to pay homage to a vanishing lifestyle of the previous generation. Reconciling these two forces was not an easily resolved matter. Although Moshe Rynecki was born at the end of the nineteenth century, and did not paint until the early twentieth century, the struggle between identifying as a contemporary Jew and feeling the tug of traditional Judaism is highly visible in his choice of subjects. For Moshe Rynecki, whose family was Hasidic, these competing identities was clearly a deeply personal one.

Rynecki began drawing and painting at an early age. Much to the dismay of his father, he used chalk and paint to draw figures on the floors and walls of his home. Although Rynecki probably would have preferred to go straight to an art school, he first completed his Jewish education at a yeshiva. Subsequently he attended a Russian middle school in the city of Miedzyrzecka, which was a prerequisite to acceptance at the Warsaw Academy of Art. His dates of attendance at the Warsaw Academy of Art are unknown.

At the age of 17, Moshe married Paula Mittelsbach, the daughter of a Warsaw family of some means. While Moshe continued his studies at the Warsaw Academy, Paula was left to oversee the household and to run a small store on Krucza Street. The store, which sold writing materials, books, and painting supplies for artists, provided the family with an income.

After completing his formal education, Rynecki went on to paint that which he knew best; the community in which he lived. In a painting such as "Curious Children" [3] he portrayed everyday life, while in paintings such as "Simhat Torah,"[4] "Synagogue Interior,"[5] and "In the Study,"[6] he portrayed places, events, and issues central to the Jewish community.

Rynecki was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto early in the Second World War. Although he had little access to painting materials in the Ghetto, he did continue to paint. Only three paintings from this period of his life survived the Holocaust: "In the Shelter,"[7] "Forced Labor," [8] and "Refugees"[9](Collection of Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' And Heroes' Remembrance Authority. On permanent display in their "Between Walls and Fences: The Ghettos" Gallery [10])

In early 1943 Moshe was deported to Majdanek. He perished in the Majdanek concentration camp.