Felix Lembersky (born Lublin, Poland, November 11, 1913 – died Leningrad, December 2, 1970) was a Russian/Soviet painter, artist, teacher, theater stage designer and community organizer of Jewish-Ukrainian origin.
Internationally and critically acclaimed artist, Lembersky was among influential figures of Russian mid-twentieth century art. His painting style spanned from academic realism to expressive, semi-abstract and symbolist forms that rely on rich vibrant color, pastose texture and complex geometries. Despite his modernist tendencies in the later years, Lembersky considered himself a realist; in his autobiography he cited Russian icons and Russian avant-garde among the main influences on his art. Formal transformations in his work served the to heighten the expression of human condition. The human image is at the center of Lembersky’s paintings, from his earlier portraits to the later compositions. His landscapes reconstruct human forms and gesture through still objects, retaining the memory of human activity, even in their absence.
The themes in Lembersky's art focused the Siege of Leningrad, the Miners of the Urals, Staraya Ladoga, Russian Revolution (1917), industrial sites of Nizhny Tagil and Holocaust. Three Babi Yar paintings (1944–52), which Lembersky painted following the death of his parents at the hands of the Nazis in Ukraine, are the earliest known artistic record of the massacre. The final painting of the Babi Yar cycle was created during Stalin’s vicious anti-Semitic campaign in 1952. The second painting Babi Yar painting was never exhibited in the Soviet Union, it was shown publicly for the first time at Brandeis University in 2011 marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre.
Lembersky’s art and life put him in contact with many great artists, writers, musicians and cultural figures, including Nikolay Punin, Pavel Filonov, Anatoly Kaplan, Natan Altman, Mark Epshtein, Boris Ioganson, Isaak Brodsky, Dmitry Shostakovich, Natan Rakhlin, Pavel Bazhov, Marietta Shaginian, Bella Dizhur, Ernst Neisvestny, Mikhail Distergeft, Vasily Ushakov, Broneslava Gershoig, Nadezhda Komarovskaya, Aleksey Komarov, Meta Dreyfeld, Nikolay Timkov, Aleksander Dashkevich, Nikolay Brandt, Solomon Gershov, Iosif Zisman, Moisey Vaynman, Mikhail, Natarevich, Naum Mogilevsky, Ivan Godlevsky, Avgust Lanin, Natalia Lanina, Konstantin Simun, Mikhail Raikhel, Boris Kraichik and Sergey Dovlatov and Vasily Grossman.
He was married to Lucia Keiserman Lemberskaya (1915–1994).
Lembersky’s paintings are in the holdings of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Norton and Nancy Dodge collection at The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, and Nizhny Tagil Art Museum, which he co-founded in the Urals in 1944. Large part of his oeuvre is in private family collection in the USA.
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1913 Born in Lublin, Poland
1914-18 World War I Lembersky family become refugees and move to Berdichev, Ukraine
1917-22 October Socialist Revolution and Civil War
1928–29 Attends the Jewish Arts and Trades School (known as “Kulturliga Art school”) in Kiev
1930–33 Theater set designer at Jewish Theater, Kiev
1932–33 The Great Famine in the Ukraine
Socialist Realism becomes a state policy
1933–35 Attends Kiev Art Institute
1935–41 Attends the Russian Academy of Arts in Leningrad
Tours the Urals, to collect material for his thesis
1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union The Siege of Leningrad (1941–44) Wounded during the summer of 1941 Lembersky completes his thesis in the besieged Leningrad Graduates with honors for academic achievement Parents perish in Berdichev during the Holocaust
1944 Returns to Leningrad Joins the Union of Soviet Artists Offers private art classes at his studio
1944–54 Works on commissions and portraits of workers, and heads group projects Creates Execution: Babi Yar series
1948-53 Stalin terror against the arts and Jewish culture
1955 Creates triptych Leaders and Children for Anichkov Palace
1956 Beginning of the Thaw
1956–57 Novgorod and Pskov series
1958 The Urals Series 1959–64 Railway Pointer and Miners series and Staraya Ladoga series
1960 Personal exhibition at LOSSKh exhibition gallery in Leningrad
1963 Khruschev’s repression against the arts
1950s–’60s Lembersky speaks out for greater freedom in Soviet art Organizes unofficial exhibitions of young artists
1970 Dies December 2 at his home in Leningrad
2011 Felix Lembersky and Non-mimetic Socialist Realism, upcoming, panel presentation at ASEEES conference, Washington, DC
2011 Felix Lembersky, ongoing, Rubin-Frankel Gallery, Boston University Hillel, Boston, MA (catalog)
2011 Faces of Babi Yar in Felix Lembersky’s Art. Presence and Absence, exhibition and symposium, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (catalog)
2010 Felix Lembersky: Revival of Jewish Art after World War II, media poster presentation at Association for Jewish Studies, 42nd Annual Conference, Boston, MA
2010 Felix Lembersky, public lecture at The Academy of Art, St. Petersburg, Russia
2009 Point. Line. Fence. Felix Lembersky, Newbury College Art Gallery, Brookline, MA
2009 Intermuseum-2009, VDNKh, Moscow, Russia
2007–08 Restoration as the Rebirth of Art: Restoration of Painting from the Sixteenth through the Twentieth Centuries from the Collection of the Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Art, Nizhny Tagil
2006 Leningrad Artist Felix Lembersky, Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Art
2005 The Art of Portraiture, Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Art
2004–05 Painting of the First Half of the Twentieth Century from the Collection of the Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Art, Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Art
2004 Exhibition for the Sixty-Year Anniversary of the End of the Leningrad Siege, Saint Petersburg Union of Artists (The Siege of Leningrad Survivor, 1949)
1999 Felix Lembersky. Hillwood Art Museum, Long Island University, Brookville, New York (Catalog)
1989 Felix Lembersky: Retrospective Exhibition, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
1988 Felix Lembersky: Retrospective Exhibition, Ann Arbor, Michigan
1970 Commemorative Exhibition of the Art of Felix Lembersky, LOSKh, Leningrad
1961 Art by Leningrad Artists, Russian Museum, Leningrad (At Factory Tracks, oil, 1961; Daughter’s Portrait, oil, 1961; The Wharf, oil, 1961)
1960 Paintings by Felix Lembersky and Sculpture by Mikhail Vayman, LOSKh, Leningrad (catalogue) (76 oils, 55 works on paper in watercolor, gouache, and pastel, and 87 drawings)
1955 Exhibition of the National Art, Manezh Exhibition Hall, Moscow
1954 Art by Leningrad Artists, Russian Museum, Leningrad (catalog)
1951, 1954, 1960 Art by Leningrad Artists, Russian Museum, Leningrad (catalogs)
1945, 1946, 1948 Group exhibitions at the Central Navy Museum and Museum of Leningrad Defense, Leningrad
1945 Exhibition of Paintings by Leningrad Artists, LOSSKh, Leningrad (catalog)
1944 Frontlines and Homefront, Sverdlovsk and Leningrad
1943 Exhibition dedicated to the active Soviet troops, Sverdlovsk
1942 The Decade of the Urals, Sverdlovsk
Selected Bibliography
2011
Freeze, ChaeRan. “Unearthed.” Tablet Magazine, March 10, 2011
Leah Burrows. “A Jewish Artist’s Untold Story.” The Jewish Advocate, March 4, 2011
Ori Z Soltes. “Felix Lembersky: The Artist Uncovered.” Ars Judaica, vol. 7, 2011
Eric Herschthal. “Babi Yar and the Rose Art Museum: Things Worth Seeing.” The Jewish Week, March 1, 2011
Jason Blanchard, Robert Goodwin, and Yelena Lembersky. Felix Lembersky in Color, web-film created for Faces of Babi Yar in Felix Lembersky’s Art: Presence and Absence, symposium at The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, March 2011, published on YouTube and Vimeo
2010
Musya Glants. “Felix Lembersky.” Book Review. The Russian Review, July 2010
Irina Karasik. “Felix Lembersky.” Book Review. DI (‘Dialog Iskusstv’), March 2010
2009
Alison Hilton, Yelena Lembersky. Felix Lembersky 1913-70. Paintings and Drawings. Moscow: Galart, 2009 (bilingual catalogue in English and Russian, full color, 154 pages)
“Felix Lembersky.” Book Review. ARLIS Art Libraries Society of North America, 2009
Mikhail Krutikov. “Felix Lembersky.” Book Review. Forvert, August 7, 2009
Larisa Smirnikh, Elena Ilyina. Felix Lembersky: Tvortsi Uzniki Sovesti. Nizhny Tagil: Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Art, 2009
2007
Nasedkina, A. A. “Project ‘Felix (Falik) Samuilovich Lembersky 1913–1970’: Restoration as the Rebirth of Art; Restoration of Painting of the Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries from the Collection of the Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Art.” Nizhny Tagil: State Museum of Fine Arts, 2007, 72–75. Catalog
2004
Ilyina, Y., and L. Smirnikh, “Felix Lembersky and Tagil Periods in His Art.” Gornozavodskoi Ural, Nizhny Tagil, 2004, 75–92
Ilyina, Y, L. Smirnikh, and M. Ageeva, Painting of the First Half of the Twentieth Century from the Collection of the Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Arts. Nizhny Tagil: State Museum of Fine Arts, 2004, 91
2003
Musya Glants. “Jewish Artists in Russian Art: Painting and Sculpture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras.” Published in Jewish Life after the USSR, edited by Zvi Gittleman with Musya Glants and Marshall I. Goldman. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003
Olga Litvak Painting and Sculpture. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
1990s
Soltes, Ori Z., Felix Lembersky. New York: Hillwood Art Museum, Long Island University, Brookville, 1999
1980s
Jewish News, Detroit, Michigan, USA, July 15, 1988
Jewish News, Detroit, Michigan, USA, May 19, 1989
1970s Leon Shapiro, “Easter Europe: Soviet Union: Today and A Look Back.” American Jewish Year Book, 1973
Zisman, Iosif. “The Life of Felix Lembersky.” Sovetish Heimland, Moscow, 1972
“Falik Lembersky” in “Essays about Artists.” ZTYME, Krajowa. December 13, 1969
1960s “Felix Lembersky.” Sovetish Heimland, Moscow, 1969. Color insert
“Sovetske vytvarne umеni (Avant-garde traditions in Soviet art).” Sovetskoe Iskusstvo. Trutnov: OV SCSP, Czechoslovakia, 1961
Kornilov, P. Felix Lembersky. Leningrad: Leningradskoe Otdelenie Souza Sovetskikh Khudozhnikov RSFSR, 1960. Catalog
1950s
“Decade of the Arts in the Urals.” In Marietta Shaginyan: A Collection of Essays in Six Volumes. Volume 6, “About Art and Literature.” Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Khudozhestvennoi Literaturi, 1958, 417–29
1940s
“Decade of the Arts in the Urals.” Homefront in the Urals: A Writer’s Diary. 1944, 125–26
Trud, Urals Almanach, 1943–44
Berezark, I. “Exhibition of Tagil Artists.” Tagilskiy Rabochiy, Nizhny Tagil, May 29, 1943
Davidov, A. Soviet Landscape. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1958.“Decade of the Arts in the Urals.” Izvestiya, October 24, 1942
Lembersky, Felix. “Let’s Organize a Union of Soviet Artists in Nizhny Tagil.” Tagilskiy Rabochiy, Nizhny Tagil, July 28, 1942
“Tagil Artists at Work.” Tagilskiy Rabochiy, Nizhny Tagil, September 13, 1942
Shaginyan, Marietta. “Decade of the Arts in the Urals.” Literatura I Iskusstvo, November 30, 1942
“The Art in the Urals Today.” Literatura I Iskusstvo, December 19, 1942
“The Work of Tagil Artists.” Tagilskiy Rabochiy, Nizhny Tagil, November 7, 1942
Zimenko, V. M., et al. Visual Art during the Great Patriotic War. Moscow: Akademia Khudozhestv SSSR, 1951, 157–58
1930s
“Proletarskaya Pravda,” Globus, 1933
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, The Norton & Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union (1956–1986), Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, USA
Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg
The Russian Academy of Arts, Saint Petersburg (Strike at the Urals Plant, oil, 1941)
Saint Petersburg City History Museum at Peter and Paul Fortress (Reading of War Order before Battle, with Nikolay Timkov, oil, 1944–48; The Siege Survivor, oil, 1949; portrait drawings, charcoal, ink, black watercolor on paper, 1941–44)
State Museum of Political History of Russia (formerly the State Museum of the Revolution), Saint Petersburg (First News: Revolution 1917, oil, 1956)
Anichkov Palace, Saint Petersburg (formerly the Palace of Youth) (Leaders and Children, oil, 1955)
Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Art
Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts
Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Collection of Yelena Lembersky, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Collection of Mikhail Raikhel and Zhanna Vestfrid, Beersheba
Collection of Mikhail Grachov, Saint Petersburg
Collection of Iosif and Natalia Zisman