Illustration to Y. L. Peretz’s A gilgul fun a nigun

Arthur Kolnik

1948

Woodblock print of man holding violin and walking through field.

Arthur Kolnik dedicated his illustrations of Y. L. Peretz’s story, “A gilgl fun a nign” (The Transmigration of a Melody), to his brother, who, along with his family, was murdered in the Holocaust. Some of his woodcuts for the book drew on imagery of the traditional world of the shtetl and Jewish culture, while others depicted scenes from death camps.

Credits

Courtesy Graphic Witness.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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Creator Bio

Arthur Kolnik

1880–1972

Born in Stanislawów, Galicia (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine), Arthur Kolnik was a painter and printmaker best known for illustrating Yiddish poetry and other Jewish works. Kolnik studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków before serving in the Austrian army during World War I. After the war, he lived in Czernowitz, then part of Romania, but eventually moved to New York, where, in 1921, he exhibited his paintings alongside fellow artist and friend Reuven Rubin. Kolnik moved to Paris in 1931, where he worked primarily as an illustrator for fashion journals. In 1940, he and his family were interned at Récébédou. In 1968, Kolnik had a major exhibition at the Tel Aviv Art Museum.