Newspaper clipping in Russian from 1925 showing Mintchine and one of the costumes he designed for the Berlin Jewish Theater
Abraham Mintchine lived in Berlin between 1923 and 1925. This corresponds to a period during which there was great artistic and cultural ferment in the German capital. Mintchine took part in the then vibrant artistic community which included Expressionist as well as New Objectivity painters, writers, poets and filmmakers. Here Mintchine had an exhibition which reportedly showed 47 artworks in the Avant-Garde style. Unfortunately, none of these artworks have been identified even until today. It is in Berlin that, in contact with other German painters, young Abraham progresses toward figurative art. This would eventually bring him to repudiate his Russian years and make deep impressions, in a figurative style for which he is mostly known nowadays, in the Ecole de Paris circle.
Mintchine closely collaborated with the Jewish Theatre of Berlin
Newspaper frontpage in Yiddish from 1924, showing a scenography that Mintchine designed for the Berlin Jewish Theater.Costume designed by Abraham Mintchine for the Jewish theaterNewspaper clipping in Yiddish showing a costume Mintchine designed for the Berlin Jewish Theater
However, during this Berlin period Mintchine also closely collaborated with the Jewish Theatre of Berlin. Also known as the “Jüdisches Kulturbund Theater” or the “Jüdisches Theater Berlin,” it was a theatre company established in Berlin, Germany, during the 1920s. It was founded in 1924 and operated until 1938, when it was forcibly closed by the Nazis as part of their anti-Semitic policies.
Newspaper clipping in German showing two costumes Mintchine designed for the Berlin Jewish TheaterNewspaper clipping in Russian showing costumes Mintchine designed for the Berlin Jewish Theater
During its brief existence, the Jewish Theatre of Berlin played an important role in the cultural life of the Jewish community in Berlin, providing a platform for Jewish artists and performers who were otherwise marginalised or excluded from mainstream theatres due to anti-Semitic restrictions. The theatre staged productions of plays, operas, and other performances that reflected the Jewish cultural heritage and addressed contemporary social and political issues.
Acknowledgment for reception of 16 costume drawings from the drama Belsaza (Belsazar?) by the organizers of the “Storm” exhibition at the international theater exhibition of the city of Vienna (1924).
In 1924 and 1925, the Jewish Theatre of Berlin would have been in its early years, establishing itself as a cultural institution within the Jewish community in Berlin. It would have faced challenges and restrictions imposed by anti-Semitic laws and policies of the time, including censorship, financial difficulties, and social discrimination. However, despite these challenges, the theatre managed to stage productions and provide a platform for Jewish artists and performers to express themselves and contribute to the rich cultural tapestry of Berlin.
The fate of the Jewish Theatre of Berlin changed dramatically after the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933
Mintchine collaborated with the Jewish Theatre of Berlin, designing various costumes and helping to refine scenographies. Lately, a number of documents, pictures of costumes and scenes, as well as newspaper articles highlighting these collaborations, have been rediscovered by Sarah Edelson. These are published by the society for the first time and we heartily thank Sarah for bringing them to light.
“Abraham Mintchine” by Max Osborn (1870-1946; prominent German art critic, journalist, and prolific author). Text in German.
It’s important to note that the fate of the Jewish Theatre of Berlin changed dramatically after the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933. In 1938, as part of the systematic persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, the theatre was forcibly closed, and many of its members were arrested or forced to flee the country. The theatre’s closure marked a dark chapter in the history of Jewish culture in Berlin and a tragic loss to the artistic and cultural landscape of the city.
Prof. Hélène Menegaldo (Еле́на Менегальдо), is a French Slavic scholar of Russian origin. Honorary professor at the University of Poitiers in France, she is an expert on the Russian diaspora and the poet Boris Poplavski. We are delighted to post the following article. It was originally written in French and has been kindly translated in English by Prof. Gilles Menegaldo for the Mintchine Society. The article will also be included in the biographic section of the website.
“Unveiling something invisible to our dead eyes …” – such is, according to the poet and critic Boris Poplavski, the immense merit of the work of Abraham Mintchine who, “by a completely unusual union of realism and fantasy, […] has managed to paint Parisian sunsets or even unreal night lights such as the angels he loved to draw, his demons, dolls, harlequins and clowns, themselves were born from the radiation and movement of the atmosphere of his paintings, above all and specifically unusually realistic.”
In these paintings angels share the life of men, appear to them in their dreams, keep watch over the sleeping children. Heavenly ships, weaving invisible links between earth and sky, they participate in the nature of the two universes. Mintchine was one of those “lost angels” who vibrated at the impalpable presence of the supra-sensitive at the heart of everyday life. Hence the extraordinary achievement of the painter: Everything is alive in these interiors. For Mintchine, there were no inanimate objects, chairs, lamps, dolls and bouquets – in his work everything lives, moves, breathes, as if he were releasing all the spirits and angels locked in objects.
In his work everything lives, moves, breathes, as if he were releasing all the spirits and angels locked in objects
It was in Paris, in this too short period of time granted him by fate that the painter was to create his work, because the “métèque” artists found there a freedom unknown in their fatherland as well as great brotherliness: Montparnasse became the ark of Russian culture, a second homeland for these uprooted people driven out of their country by pogroms, civil war or border changes.
Abraham Mintchine was born in 1898 in Kiev. He was bound apprentice at the age of thirteen in the shop of a goldsmith and lost his health there, but learned to work gold, a precious material, a symbol of the Spirit, which he craftfully handled, soaking up its light which will later illuminate his paintings. This training accounts for accuracy and speed of execution in his work, underlined by his friend the poet and art critic Boris Poplavski: “He could, in a minute, change the lighting and general meaning of a large canvas. This great ease, however, did not spoil the essence of his painting, because it was constantly supported and nourished by his extraordinarily serious conception, one could say a really tragic one, of the calling of art”.
Still life with violin, 81×100, oil on canvas, MIN004
Noted for his ability to draw, Mintchine entered the School of Fine Arts in Kiev in 1914 thanks to the recommendation of the poet Samuel Marchak. Kiev, a southern city open to the influences of the East, was then the cradle of literary and pictorial futurism, a locus for travelling artistic exhibitions, a meeting place for artists of all kinds wishing to create an original culture reconciling modernism and national heritage (Ukrainian folk art, Jewish sacred art and folklore. Despite the ambient anti-Semitism, literature, plastic arts (with Lyssizky, Rybak, Tyschler, Schifrin…) and the Jewish theatre flourished in the city thanks to the Kulturligue (Center for Jewish Culture) which operated there from 1917 to 1920, the year of the definitive establishment of Soviet power. The workshop of Alexandra Exter, a pioneer in 20th century art, was one of the salons of the city’s intellectual elite. At the end of 1918, Exter opened, with the painter Isaac Rabinovitch, a decorative art workshop where scenography was also taught. The following year, with a group of artists (Rabinovitch, Tychler, Schifrin), Exter adorned the city with banners ornated with abstract motifs: the street became a museum of living art.
While it cannot be argued that Mintchine was Alexandra Exter’s disciple, the artistic atmosphere of the Ukrainian capital certainly played a role in his training. The painter then went through the terrible years of civil war and famine that devastated Ukraine and in 1923, like many Russian refugees, he took the Polish route to join Berlin in the company of his wife Sonia, a lyrical artist. Berlin, the third Russian capital between 1922 and 1925, saw the confrontation of all the pictorial trends of the time: German expressionism, but also cubo-futurism, suprematism and constructivism, imported by Russian artists fleeing the Soviet regime or, on the contrary, wishing to promote its achievements. The German capital then has 70,000 Russian nationals.
The painter then went through the terrible years of civil war and famine that devastated Ukraine
Chagall stated: “In my life, I never saw as many beautiful rabbis and constructivists as in Berlin in 1922”. A first step on the road to exile, Berlin also attracts, because of its low cost of living, artists already settled in Paris like sculptor Alexandre Archipenko, painters Constantin Terechkovitch and Serge Charchoune, but also writers, poets and journalists. All used to meet at the House of Arts, chaired by the symbolist poet Minski. This was where, coming from Soviet Russia, Maïakovski and Essénine used to perform their poetic evenings, this was where representatives of the diaspora and the metropolis could meet thanks to the relative opening of borders due to NEP. Ivan Pougny’s lecture on modern art triggered fierce controversy between A. Archipenko, Natan Altman, Naoum Gabo, El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenbourg. The artists of the two sides of the border ran exhibitions together as part of the Grosse Berliner Kunstauustellung, created in 1919.
In 1923, Lissitsky organized his Proouns room there, Charchoune, Jawlensky and Pougny exhibited their work in the section of November, the leftist group. The painters joined up in the workshop of the Pougny couple, located near the Nollendorfplatz, a meeting place for the Russian and German intelligentsia, and in the workshop of the painter Nicolas Zaretski, frequented, among others, by Mintchine, Terechkovitch as well as by Larionov and Gontcharova: the couple, settled in Europe since 1916, came to supervise the staging of the ballet L’écharpe de Colombine, at Boris Romanov’s Russian Romantic Theatre. This was undoubtedly where Mintchine and Poplavski first met: their common friend, the poet Vadim Andreev, reported their presence at the same time. Both painters worked in Berlin and to earn a living. Mintchine drew costumes and sets for the Jewish Theatre and painted, in a cubist style, canvases of which only one is known.
In November 1922 the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung held the first exhibition of Russian art in the West. This major artistic event presents at the Van Diemen Gallery one hundred and fifty artists, from the19th century Ambulants to the avant-garde (Malevitch, Gabo, Pevsner, Lissitsky …). The year 1922 represented the apex of the Russian presence in Berlin: during the winter of 1923-1924, the German atmosphere became “heavy and catastrophic”, according to philosopher Berdiaev. In addition, deflation no longer allowed a favourable exchange rate, the foreign currency and securities brought from Russia were spent up. Publishers, newspapers and magazines, theatres and cabarets closed one after the other – everything that provided a livelihood for diaspora artists and intellectuals was gone.
He knew how to avoid the orgy of colours and the taste for decorum
In 1925, Mintchine had an exhibition in Berlin; on the following year, he reached Paris where his art, rid of the “childhood disease of painting” that is cubism, was to experience a rapid evolution: characters and objects, freed from the black line which surrounded and imprisoned them, shone with an aura of light which transfigured them; the painter gave up dull shades, the grey and brown tones of his beginnings were erased from his palette in favour of a solar range associating red with yellow-gold, and his colours acquired this fluidity that René Gimpel would later greet. However, he knew how to avoid the orgy of colours and the taste for decorum which the painters of the Russian school of Paris readily yielded to. His search for unexpected and complex combinations of colours, the power and expressiveness of his portraits, such as The Man with the Red Pullover, brought him much closer to Soutine, while the spirituality and harmony that emanated from his paintings distinguished them from the tormented art of his elder, both artists being comparable in terms of their talent.
The artist as a busker (self portrait), oil on canvas, MIN278
“Working tirelessly, burning with a constant flame”, according to the word of his friend Poplavski, he was quickly to reach the fullness of his talent, despite suffering terrible misery: he earned a living by painting scarves, decorating plates and probably, as a street musician, according to the self-portraits where he stands with a mandolin or a violin (an excellent musician, he played the piano and the violin). He lived on the fringes of the bohemian life of Montparnasse cafes that were the haunts of his colleagues who arrived with the first waves of emigration (1907-1911, then 1920), devoting all his available time to his painting and his home where some close friends came to seek some peace of mind: “I spent the whole day with the Mintchines”, notes his friend Poplavski in his journal. “The clock ticking, the stove purred, the piano cut out its crystal notes, and Sonia, like a caged bird, sang ancient songs”. After the passing of her husband, Sonia gave a concert at the private hotel of René Gimpel (16/02/1933), with the participation of the French singer Tosca Marmor, and in 1934 played Mozart, Schumann, Handel, at the Hôtel Majestic.
Mintchine was sensitive to the magic of Paris: “One of his favourite themes was evening in Paris, with the extraordinary difficulty of its lights and the first shadows of the streets, as well as interiors illuminated by scintillating clouds and the translucent gleam from a table lamp”. As Poplavski noted, Mintchine had studied with the “old masters, in particular Rembrandt, El Greco and Claude Lorrain, [and] absolutely did not fear these “difficult” lights that to-day young painters strive hard to avoid”. Even though there were reminiscences of biblical themes, each painting condensed the sparks of the divine scattered in nature and, according to Kabbalah, “brings up the sparks” so that they unite with infinite light: Mintchine did not paint the themes, but the very soul of Hassidism. This is how his quest to apprehend the deeper “secrets of plastic magic”, as Poplavski notes, resulted in the redemption of the “nature” of the painting by means of its “soul”, leading to rare, extremely sensitive works of art.
These paintings, displayed at the Salon des Tuileries, Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne, attracted the attention of collectors and critics. In 1928, Mintchine exhibited at the Margaret Henry Gallery, rue de Seine, with Alekseï Arapov, Moïse Bloume (Maurice Blond) and Boris Poplavski (catalogue prefaced by Serge Romov, editor of the journal Oudar). Three of his works appeared in the Russian section of the French Exhibition of Contemporary Art in Moscow. The same year, his daughter Irene was born. He painted her in her cradle, watched over by an angel. Robert Falk, painter of the group Le Valet de Carreau who worked alongside Mintchine, of whom he was to leave a portrait, will write: “With his fiery temper, his enormous love of art, he was bound to become a remarkable artist. […] It was very beneficial to me to live with an artist like him, whose thoughts and feelings were turned towards art.”
Mintchine did not paint the themes, but the very soul of Hassidism
The following year saw the first Parisian exhibition of Mintchine, at Alice Manteau’s, then at Zborowski’s. The famous art dealer René Gimpel bought many paintings, which allowed him to go to Provence to try and restore his health — he had a heart condition and suffered from tuberculosis and he had been operated on for a kidney — undermined by a life of deprivation. The contract signed with René Gimpel in 1930 protected him from need and allowed him to devote himself entirely to painting. In contact with Provence nature, he made prodigious progress and wonderfully assimilated the landscape, according to the testimony of his friend the painter André Favory, who noted: “A frantic ardour urged him to do three painting sessions a day as if he sensed the brevity of his passage on earth”. Leaving urban themes, he made, during this fruitful period, large paintings like La Joute Provençale or his magnificent Portrait of a Travelling Merchant. For the first time, thanks to the contact with air and water, blue tones helped expand a chromatic range which offered an extraordinary variety of reds and ochres.
The Peddler with Arlequin, 92×65, oil on canvas, MIN018
In January 1930, a large exhibition of Russian painters organized by the Zak gallery enabled Mintchine to appear on the picture rails alongside, among others, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Gontcharova, André Lanskoy, Ivan Pougny, Paul Mansourov, Natan Altman…. That same year marked the birth of the journal Tchisla, a young generation platform that gave a large place to the cultural and artistic events of the School of Paris. Its ten issues offered reproductions of works by forty-one painters: Chagall, Gontcharova, Larionov, Pascin … and Mintchine, whose talent was paid tribute to in the journal.
Tchisla set up several remarkable exhibitions at The L’Époque gallery, eight in all. The first, which took place from March 23 to April 9, 1931, displayed two paintings by Mintchine. In a letter to Alice Manteau, he regretted that he was unable to attend this exhibition and asked his friends to share their impressions with him. On April 25, the painter died of ruptured aneurysm in La Garde, near Toulon, leaving sorrowful relatives and friends. With him, it was one of the great masters of painting of the beginning of the 20th century who disappeared, “a genius died in the prime of life”, according to René Gimpel’s words, taken up by his Russian friends and critics.
On the following year, the Salon des Indépendants offered a retrospective bringing together ten paintings by the departed painter, whose canvases also appeared in Le Visage Humain exhibition, mounted by Tchisla. In the article he then gave to the Russian journal, Maximilien Gauthier noted that these retrospectives allow a better appreciation of the loss suffered. “Even in his least fantastic paintings, where the supernatural does not show openly,” the critic wrote, “it manages to convey an atmosphere which leads to meditate on the mysteries that surround us”. Noting what Mintchine’s visionary art owes to his mastery of the profession and his refusal of easy effects, he underlines the quality of the pictorial material, the texture of the painting, the felicitous mingling of pure colours. He prophesizes: “In the history of the Paris School, the name of Mintchine shall appear alongside those of Modigliani, Chagall and Soutine.”
The Union of Jewish Artists put up a Mintchine retrospective in 1938 and in July 1939, his paintings were still displayed at an exhibition by Russian painters at the Galerie Le Cadran. Then war came, together with the ransacking of workshops, the closure of galleries, the disappearance in the death camps of many representatives of the Paris School. His untimely death, then the scattering of his works deprived Mintchine of a recognition that his friends – Gontcharova, Larionov, Soutine, Lanskoy and others will experience, albeit belatedly.
Massimo Di Veroli who discovered the paintings of the Parisian painter displayed at the Lorenzelli Gallery in Bergamo in 1969, devoted his life to repairing this injustice, bringing together the works, organizing exhibitions, publishing catalogues: let him be thanked here on behalf of all those for whom he has made it possible to discover and love this truly inspired painting.
Chil Aronson was a journalis and art critic. The following biographical article, first published in Paris in 1963 in “Scenes et Visages de Montparnasse” offers a first-hand account of Mintchine’s life. It is interesting to note that among the many qualities he highlights, Chil Aronson see Mintchne as a herald of Social-Realism. Reading this article, one can only be touched by the words of the author, written more than 30 years after Mintchine’s passing.
Abraham Mintchine’s Tragic Fate
Mintchine was thirty years old when he left us. He is unforgettable and I often think of him. His thin and slender figure and his pale face always worried me. His atelier was in an old two-storied house in 83 rue de la Glaciere. The pitiful room where he lived was a sharp contrast to his bright paintings.
He invited me to his place to paint my portrait. At eight o’clock he was already standing by his easel painting spontaneously – seemingly in a trance. After I sat for him five times he was still unhappy with the result, and ripped the canvas to pieces. Then in twenty minutes he made a small portrait of me – a masterpiece.
The pitiful room where he lived was a sharp contrast to his bright paintings
It was a time of abject indigence, yet Mintchine did not stop painting even for a minute. Once, when he was utterly penniless, he asked me to sell one of his paintings, a beautiful still life. I asked 200 francs for it but could not find a buyer. Two years later he exhibited with two wonderful painters, Blond and Bart, at the Alice Manteau Gallery. Two young critics, who thought him a brilliant colorist, lavished unrestrained praise on him. In the wake of this success the Alice Manteau Gallery signed a year’s contract with him and put on an exhibition of his works in Brussels. Mintchine’s greatest pleasure was painting, which he lived to enjoy for only a very few years.
Table in front of the window, 61x50cm, oil on canvas,MIN135
He was born in 1898 in Kiev and worked for a goldsmith. During Petlyura’s persecutions he suffered from hunger and contracted tuberculosis, which eventually brought about his death at such an early age. His good friend, the well-known painter Andre Favory, said that when he saw Mintchine working from sunrise to sunset he thought that at the bottom of his heart Minchine must have known that his days were numbered.
In 1923 Mintchine left Russia, went to Berlin, and stayed there for two years. There he staged an exhibition of his works, that were in the Cubist style. From Berlin he went to Paris and won recognition from the talented members of the School of Paris.
As early as in the 20s, Mintchine was one of the heralds of Social-Realism
In the 1934 exhibition, alongside his typical portraits, wonderful works were displayed – sights of Paris. Solid, clear comprehensible paintings. How refined are the surfaces. He succeeded in creating a stirring unity, a pinkish harmony. And he displayed so much love to the working man in his works. I, who have seen so many of his outstanding paintings depicting porters and destitute people, believe that as early as in the 20s Mintchine was one of the heralds of Social-Realism, which was manifest in the Salon d’Automne in the 50s. The scenes featuring the laborers were executed in extraordinary pictorial means, and were full of light. Unfortunately, most of these paintings are in private collections, not only in Paris, but also in Belgium, the USA, Ireland and Switzerland. I would have liked to collect all of them and display them in an exhibition containing these great works.
Worksite in Paris, 54x81cm, Oil on canvas, MIN173
What we have here is a remarkable colorist, a poet of nature, of life. He succeeded in intimately interlacing music with painting. How majestic is the combination between sky, sea and boats in his seascapes. What keen observation of reality, what innocent, naive observation, reflecting his outlook on the world. Mintchine liked especially pink and red shades which were often used for his colorful harmonies. Particularly beautiful are his still lifes. Their colors are soul-stirring and flooded with light. It is true that Mintchine liked to create harmonies in shades of red, but the greens in his landscapes and the fluid browns, yellows and whitish colors are intensive and deep.
Mintchine is a painter of life, a poet of the working people, of sunlit seascapes, of life in the harbors, with boats sailing in the horizon. He is a poet of youth, of blossoms. His friend, the painter Andre Favory said that his portrait painted by Mintchine illuminated his room as if it was an original Van Gogh.
Mintchine is a painter of life, a poet of the working people, of sunlit seascapes, of life in the harbors, with boats sailing in the horizon
In the last six years of his life Minrchine’ s career was utterly changed, and on one warm morning in 1931, in the village of St. Margaret, Mintchine sat painting in the field, in the landscape, when he felt faint and collapsed. Workers brought him to a small fishermen’s cafe, and when his wife arrived with the doctor, he was pronounced dead. In the last landscape he painted, the sky is especially red and the cypresses are upright as if they are offering a prayer.
Chil Aronson, Scenes et Visages de Montparnasse, Paris 1963
André Favory was a french painter (1888-1937) who in his day was much admired by critics (including Louis Vauxcelles). His works were exhibited in numerous galleries in Paris and Brussels, as well as London, Amsterdam, New York and Tokyo. His artwork is conserved in various museums, including the Centre Pompidou.
André Favory final years were blighted by a crippling illness which eventually would prevent him from painting (a watercolour of Favory from Mintchine, seems to show him ailing). Favory met Mintchine when the latter decided to travel to South of France in order to discover new landscapes in 1930.
André Favory, Autoportrait a la femme blonde, 101×74.5cm, oil on canvas, 1924 Credit: Centre Pompidou
In the letter that follows, Favory recounts in it his experience at the side of Abraham Mintchine. It has been written in 1931 following the death of Mintchine. The letter was initially published in Mintchine’s first catalogue raisonné (Massimo Di Veroli and Giovanni Testori, 1981, Ed.Giorgio Mondadori). We publish it here translated from French, online for the first time.
Original letter from Favory (in French)
In memory of Mintchine
I will never forget the evening I met Mintchine for the first time. We were just about at the end of our evening meal, in the olive grove, when an agile, timidly inconsequential young man with the head of an angel appeared in the garden. This was Mintchine. He had been sent to me by Fels, who had recommended La Cadiere as a good place for painters.
The fellow-feeling between us was immediate. We arranged to meet the next day, agreeing that we should devote our time to visiting landscape themes. Our wanderings astonished Mintchine, who was seeing Provence for the first time, and he was straight away captivated by it.
The unfolding of his sensitivity showed itself romantically in the picture and watching the work develop was pure joy
We decided to work together. I was able, personally, to note the lyrical excitement which Mintchine was prey to. I watched him going about his daily work, which was quite considerable. A frantic ardour often forced him into three sessions in one day. He seemed to be deeply conscious of the fact that he was alive for but a fleeting hour.
Abraham Mintchine, Landscape in Cagnes, oil on canvas, 100x81cm (ref: MIN006)
His canvases showed tremendous progress. He assimilated the landscape in a truly marvellous fashion. On days when laziness got the better of me, I would spend whole afternoons watching him work. I liked watching him work immensely because his canvases genuinely took on the value of a birth. The unfolding of his sensitivity showed itself romantically in the picture and watching the work develop was pure joy.
He seemed to be deeply conscious of the fact that he was alive for but a fleeting hour
These daily exchanges formed the building bricks of a solid, virile friendship. I learned to know him better and love him deeply, and we became very close. We worked side by side for two months. We painted each other’s portraits. And now I am truly happy to possess a picture of myself which, hanging in my studio as it does, is as resplendent as a van Gogh. This canvas has an inestimable value for me, both artistically and sentimentally. The autumn then drove us back to Paris where we continued to see each other frequently.
The news of his death, here in Provence which he loved so much, has caused me great sorrow and heart-rending grief. The Archangel has returned to that heaven where, as so often in his pictures, he used to paint his peers, the angels. I weep for a great painter, man and friend.
