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Jankel Adler

Tuszyn, Lodz, 1895 - 1949, Aldbourne, Wilts

BiographyPolish painter. He underwent an apprenticeship in engraving in 1912 and in 1913 moved to Barmen (now Wuppertal) in Germany, where he studied under Gustav Wiethüchter at the Kunstgewerbeschule during World War I. In 1918 he came into contact with Das Junge Rheinland, a group of artists based in Düsseldorf. In the same year he visited Poland, where he was one of the founders of the Ing Idisz (Young Yiddish) group, an association of painters and writers in Lódz dedicated to the expression of their Jewish identity. The few surviving works produced by Adler during this period, all in an Expressionist style, with the human figure subjected to elongated and distorted proportions, reveal his own response to these concerns. The Rabbi’s Last Hour (1919; Lódz, Mus. A.), in which the influence of El Greco has been discerned, is a good example. His inventory of images included motifs from Jewish folk art and Hebrew calligraphy.

From Grove Dictionary of Art

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