Homage to Paris

The painter Emmanuel Mané-Katz was born Mane Leyzerovich Kats in Kremenchug, Ukraine, and as a child was destined for the rabbinate. At the age of seventeen, however, he left home to study art in Vilna and then Kiev and, in 1913, went to Paris. He was in Russia during World War I but returned in 1921 to Paris, where he befriended Pablo Picasso and other important artists, and was affiliated with the art movement known as the École de Paris. In 1931, his painting The Wailing Wall was awarded a gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair. During World War II, Mané-Katz lived in the United States but made Paris his home. Like Marc Chagall, he favored overtly Jewish themes drawn from his childhood in Eastern Europe.