The painter Moshe Rynecki was born into a traditional Jewish home in a small town near Siedlice, Poland. He received a yeshiva education before studying art in Warsaw in 1906–1907. He painted familiar scenes from Warsaw Jewish life, both everyday activities and religious holidays and rituals. After the German conquest of Poland, he was forced into the Warsaw ghetto, where he painted this scene of refugees from elsewhere in Poland arriving in the ghetto. He was deported to Maidanek in 1943.
At the time of the shortest, sleepy winter days, edged on both sides with the furry dusk of mornings and evenings, when the city reached out ever deeper into the labyrinth of winter nights, and was…
In this cubist-influenced self-portrait, the artist has painted herself reflected in a mirror, perhaps a symbol of a divided self. The upturned vessels on the table communicate a sense of upheaval…
A Meeting at the StationI stood outside the grocery, holding a shopping bag in one hand, and Phat’hi’s strange “letter” in the other. I looked at the drawings of the car, the clock, and the sign over…