Pakhar’ (Ploughman)

Born in Rogachev, Belarus, Anatoly Kaplan was a printmaker, illustrator, and ceramicist who spent much of his career in Leningrad. After studying at the Leningrad Academy between 1921 and 1927, Kaplan worked as a stage designer before beginning to create lithographs in 1937. Despite the challenges facing Jewish artists in Russia at the time, Kaplan found success working in Leningrad, joining the Union of Soviet Artists in 1939 and exhibiting his work regularly. After the war, Kaplan dedicated his art to memorializing the pre-Soviet Jewish landscape through illustrations to Yiddish folk songs and the work of Mendele and Sholem Aleichem. The text surrounding the image says “Whoever ploughs and plants eats his bread in peace.”