Portrait of Anna Akhmatova

The first version of The Rock Drill, exhibited in 1915, was a white plaster figure sitting astride a real drill, an amalgam of man and machine. The sculptor, Jacob Epstein, originally intended it as a…

Rachel Bernstein-Wischnitzer’s cover design for Istoria evreiskago naroda (History of the Jewish People) features a title with dramatically stylized letters and a gold and black pattern that evokes…

Red Hammer Man (which debuted in 1912) was used on posters during Hungary’s 1919 revolution and was reproduced over the years as a key figure of socialist propaganda. The heroic figure wielding a…

The blue and white abstract shapes in The Mud Bath evoke human figures in motion against a field of red. Are they meant to be people at a public bathhouse? Or are they interpreted that way because the…

Marc Chagall’s newspaper vendor, whose pouch holds both Yiddish and Russian newspapers, looks worried. The sky is an alarming red, and the news is not good. The first world war has begun. Chagall…

Ira Jan created this hagiographical depiction of her lover Chaim Nahman Bialik being anointed by angels as a child shortly before she was deported by Ottoman authorities to Egypt. Her romantic…