Abel Pann
Encyclopedia
]
Abel Pann, born Abba Pfeffermann in Latvia
or in Kreslawka, Vitebsk
, Belarus
,, sources vary, was a European Jewish artist who spent most of his adult life in Jerusalem.
of Vitebsk, who also taught Marc Chagall
. In his youth, he traveled in Russia
and Poland
, earning a living mainly as an apprentice in sign workshops. In 1898 he went south to Odessa
where he was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1903, he was in Kishinev where he documented the Kishinev pogrom
with drawings; an effort that is thought to have contributed to his self-definition as an artist who chronicles Jewish history. Still in 1903, he moved to Paris, where he rented rooms in La Ruche, a Parisian building (which still exists) where Modigliani
, Chagall, Chaim Soutine
and other Jewish artists also lived. Pann studied at the French Academy under William-Adolphe Bouguereau
. He earned his living primarily by drawing pictures for the popular illustrated newspapers of the era. In 1912, Boris Schatz
, founder and director of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design visited Pann in Paris and invited him to come work in Jerusalem.
In 1913, after traveling in Southern Europe
and Egypt
, Pann arrived in Jerusalem where he had decided to settle for life. Pann went to see Schatz and it was decided that he would head the painting department at the Bezalel Academy for several months while Schatz embarked on an extensive overseasfund-raising trip. According to Haaretz
art critic Smadar Sheffi, a work form this period with the simple title "Jerusalem" shows a cluster of buildings at sunset "with a sky in blazing orange." The painting is "more expressive and abstract that is typical of his work," and Sheffi speculates that "the encounter with the city" of Jerusalem was a "strong emotional experience" for the artist.
Pann returned to Europe to arrange his affairs before moving permanently to the British Mandate of Palestine, but was caught on the continent by World War I
. Pann's wartime paintings would prove to be among "the most important" of his career. He made many posters to support the French war effort. He also made a series of fifty drawings showing the extreme suffering of Jewish communities caught in the fighting between Germany, Poland and Russia. Art critic Smadar Sheffi regards them as "the most important part of his oeuvre." These "shocking" drawings put modern viewers in mind of depictions of the Holocaust. Pann's drawings were intended as journalistic documentation of the fighting and were successfully exhibited in the United States
during the War. According to Pann's autobiography, the Russians, who were allied with the French, refused to allow a wartime exhibition of the drawings in France. According to the New York Times, the drawings were published in Paris during the war, but the government intervened ot block their distribution on the grounds that they "reflected damagingly upon an ally" (Russia).
of these works is linked to the 19th century orientalism
. He was part of a movement of contemporary Jewish artists interested in Biblical scenes, including Ephraim Moses Lilien, and Ze'ev Raban
. All three were influenced by Art Nouveau
and by the Symbolist movement
. This influence can be seen in "You shall not surely die," a colored lithograph in which the serpent is represented as a bare-chested woman. The lithograph is reminiscent of the style of Aubrey Beardsley
.
In 1924, Pann resigned from his teaching position to devote himself full-time to lithography. The lithographs met with considerable success on international tours. Pann told the New York Times that he found most illustrated Bibles boring, accusing the many artists who had illustrated Bibles before him of tending "to produce an impression that the Bible itself is a tiresome volume." He said that he wished to present the Bible's characters as "possessing the passions of human beings... with their virtues and vices, loves and hatreds."
Especially in his pastels, Pann envisioned Rachel
, Rebekah, and other Biblical women as child-brides and imagined the teen-aged Jewish girls from Yemen
whom he used as models along with young Bedouin
girls, regarding both Yemenites and Bedouins as authentic oriental types. He posed them in elaborate traditional wedding and festival clothing and jewelry. In the twenties, the period when Pann was painting them, Yemenite and Bedouin girls did marry at the age of puberty. He often captured not only their youth and beauty, but the anxiety of a young girl about to marry a man she might hardly know. Other pastels capture the elderly matriarch Sarah
looking "absolutely alive" and the care-worn facts of Jerusalem's Yemenite Jewish laborers, posed as Biblical patriarchs.
Pann's work reveals an intimate familiarity with the work of Rembrandt, James Tissot
, and other European painters of biblical scenes. Among his most original approaches was a pastel of Potiphar
's wife. This familiar theme had for hundreds of years and in the hands of innumerable artists conventionally depicted a mature beauty seducing an innocent youth, Joseph. According to art critic Meir Ronnen, Pann's interpretation, a late period pastel dating from the 1950s, depicts Potiphar's wife as a spoilt child, an extremely young and very bored girl who is "possibly just one of the lesser playthings of a gubernatorial harem." She turns her bored gaze on the young Israelite. Ronen considers her to be "the most brilliant of all Pann's creations."
Pann's youngest son was killed in the Israeli War of Independence. After that loss, he turned to painting scenes of the Holocaust. He died in Jerusalem in 1963.
For many years, Pann was considered an important artist in Israel, and had even greater success among Jewish art consumers abroad, but he "outlived his artistic times," fading in importance beside the new, modernist painters. Although many of his paintings are in museum collections, private collectors can sometimes find them at galleries such as the Mayanot Gallery
.
In 1990 art curator and Israeli art historian, Shlomit Steinberg submitted an MA thesis at the History of Art department of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, titled:
"The Image of the Biblical Woman as Femme Fatale in Abel Pann's Works".
Yigal Zalmona (2003), The art of Abel Pann: from Montparnasse to the Bible, Jerusalem: The Israeli Museum.
Abel Pann, born Abba Pfeffermann in Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
or in Kreslawka, Vitebsk
Vitebsk
Vitebsk, also known as Viciebsk or Vitsyebsk , is a city in Belarus, near the border with Russia. The capital of the Vitebsk Oblast, in 2004 it had 342,381 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth largest city...
, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
,, sources vary, was a European Jewish artist who spent most of his adult life in Jerusalem.
Early career and war paintings
Pann studied the fundamentals of drawing for three months with the painter Yehuda PenYehuda Pen
Yehuda Pen was a Jewish-Belarusian artist-painter, a teacher and an outstanding figure of the Jewish Renaissance in the Russian and Belarusian art of the beginning of 20th century...
of Vitebsk, who also taught Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
. In his youth, he traveled in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, earning a living mainly as an apprentice in sign workshops. In 1898 he went south to Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
where he was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1903, he was in Kishinev where he documented the Kishinev pogrom
Kishinev pogrom
The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Chişinău, then the capital of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire on April 6-7, 1903.-First pogrom:...
with drawings; an effort that is thought to have contributed to his self-definition as an artist who chronicles Jewish history. Still in 1903, he moved to Paris, where he rented rooms in La Ruche, a Parisian building (which still exists) where Modigliani
Modigliani
Modigliani may refer to:* Amedeo Modigliani , painter and sculptor** Modigliani, a 2004 biographical film about the painter and sculptor* Elio Modigliani , anthropologist, zoologist, and plant collector...
, Chagall, Chaim Soutine
Chaim Soutine
Chaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....
and other Jewish artists also lived. Pann studied at the French Academy under William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. William Bouguereau was a traditionalist; in his realistic genre paintings he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.-Life and career :William-Adolphe...
. He earned his living primarily by drawing pictures for the popular illustrated newspapers of the era. In 1912, Boris Schatz
Boris Schatz
Boris Schatz was a Lithuanian Jewish artist and sculptor who founded the Bezalel School in Jerusalem.-Biography:Boris Schatz was born in Varniai, Kaunas district, Lithuania, under the rule of the Russian Empire in 1867. His father, a teacher in a cheder , sent him to study in a yeshiva in...
, founder and director of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design visited Pann in Paris and invited him to come work in Jerusalem.
In 1913, after traveling in Southern Europe
Southern Europe
The term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean "all countries in the south of Europe". However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional political, linguistic and cultural context to the definition in addition to the typical...
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, Pann arrived in Jerusalem where he had decided to settle for life. Pann went to see Schatz and it was decided that he would head the painting department at the Bezalel Academy for several months while Schatz embarked on an extensive overseasfund-raising trip. According to Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
art critic Smadar Sheffi, a work form this period with the simple title "Jerusalem" shows a cluster of buildings at sunset "with a sky in blazing orange." The painting is "more expressive and abstract that is typical of his work," and Sheffi speculates that "the encounter with the city" of Jerusalem was a "strong emotional experience" for the artist.
Pann returned to Europe to arrange his affairs before moving permanently to the British Mandate of Palestine, but was caught on the continent by World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Pann's wartime paintings would prove to be among "the most important" of his career. He made many posters to support the French war effort. He also made a series of fifty drawings showing the extreme suffering of Jewish communities caught in the fighting between Germany, Poland and Russia. Art critic Smadar Sheffi regards them as "the most important part of his oeuvre." These "shocking" drawings put modern viewers in mind of depictions of the Holocaust. Pann's drawings were intended as journalistic documentation of the fighting and were successfully exhibited in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
during the War. According to Pann's autobiography, the Russians, who were allied with the French, refused to allow a wartime exhibition of the drawings in France. According to the New York Times, the drawings were published in Paris during the war, but the government intervened ot block their distribution on the grounds that they "reflected damagingly upon an ally" (Russia).
Mid-career and Bible paintings
Upon his post-war return to Jerusalem in 1920, Pann took up an teaching position at the Bezalel Academy and wrote that he was about to embark on his life-work, the painting and drawing of scenes from the Hebrew Bible. He returned briefly to Vienna where he met and married Esther Nussbaum and purchased a lithographic press, which the couple brought home to Jerusalem. Pann began work on a series of lithographs intended to be published in an enormous illustrated Bible, and although that series was never completed, he is widely admired for the series of pastels inspired by Bible stories that he began in the 1940s. The iconographyIconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
of these works is linked to the 19th century orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
. He was part of a movement of contemporary Jewish artists interested in Biblical scenes, including Ephraim Moses Lilien, and Ze'ev Raban
Ze'ev Raban
Ze’ev Raban was a leading painter, decorative artist, and industrial designer of the Bezalel school style, and was one of the founders of the Israeli art world.-Life:...
. All three were influenced by Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
and by the Symbolist movement
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
. This influence can be seen in "You shall not surely die," a colored lithograph in which the serpent is represented as a bare-chested woman. The lithograph is reminiscent of the style of Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
.
In 1924, Pann resigned from his teaching position to devote himself full-time to lithography. The lithographs met with considerable success on international tours. Pann told the New York Times that he found most illustrated Bibles boring, accusing the many artists who had illustrated Bibles before him of tending "to produce an impression that the Bible itself is a tiresome volume." He said that he wished to present the Bible's characters as "possessing the passions of human beings... with their virtues and vices, loves and hatreds."
Especially in his pastels, Pann envisioned Rachel
Rachel
Rachel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, is a prophet and the favorite wife of Jacob, one of the three Biblical Patriarchs, and mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She was the daughter of Laban and the younger sister of Leah, Jacob's first wife...
, Rebekah, and other Biblical women as child-brides and imagined the teen-aged Jewish girls from Yemen
Yemen
The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....
whom he used as models along with young Bedouin
Bedouin
The Bedouin are a part of a predominantly desert-dwelling Arab ethnic group traditionally divided into tribes or clans, known in Arabic as ..-Etymology:...
girls, regarding both Yemenites and Bedouins as authentic oriental types. He posed them in elaborate traditional wedding and festival clothing and jewelry. In the twenties, the period when Pann was painting them, Yemenite and Bedouin girls did marry at the age of puberty. He often captured not only their youth and beauty, but the anxiety of a young girl about to marry a man she might hardly know. Other pastels capture the elderly matriarch Sarah
Sarah
Sarah or Sara was the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Her name was originally Sarai...
looking "absolutely alive" and the care-worn facts of Jerusalem's Yemenite Jewish laborers, posed as Biblical patriarchs.
Pann's work reveals an intimate familiarity with the work of Rembrandt, James Tissot
James Tissot
James Jacques Joseph Tissot was a French painter, who spent much of his career in Britain.-Biography:Tissot was born in Nantes, France. In about 1856, he began study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Hippolyte Flandrin and Lamothe, and became friendly with Edgar Degas and James Abbott...
, and other European painters of biblical scenes. Among his most original approaches was a pastel of Potiphar
Potiphar
Potiphar or Potifar is a person in the Book of Genesis's account of Joseph. Potiphar is said to be the captain of the palace guard and is referred to without name in the Quran. Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, is taken to Egypt where he is sold to Potiphar as a household slave...
's wife. This familiar theme had for hundreds of years and in the hands of innumerable artists conventionally depicted a mature beauty seducing an innocent youth, Joseph. According to art critic Meir Ronnen, Pann's interpretation, a late period pastel dating from the 1950s, depicts Potiphar's wife as a spoilt child, an extremely young and very bored girl who is "possibly just one of the lesser playthings of a gubernatorial harem." She turns her bored gaze on the young Israelite. Ronen considers her to be "the most brilliant of all Pann's creations."
Pann's youngest son was killed in the Israeli War of Independence. After that loss, he turned to painting scenes of the Holocaust. He died in Jerusalem in 1963.
For many years, Pann was considered an important artist in Israel, and had even greater success among Jewish art consumers abroad, but he "outlived his artistic times," fading in importance beside the new, modernist painters. Although many of his paintings are in museum collections, private collectors can sometimes find them at galleries such as the Mayanot Gallery
Mayanot Gallery
Mayanot Gallery is an art gallery located on King George Street in Jerusalem.The gallery was opened in 1986 by Yael Gahnassia, soon after she emigrated to Jerusalem form Paris...
.
In 1990 art curator and Israeli art historian, Shlomit Steinberg submitted an MA thesis at the History of Art department of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, titled:
"The Image of the Biblical Woman as Femme Fatale in Abel Pann's Works".
Exhibitions
- Abel Pann Paints the Bible, The Israel MuseumIsrael MuseumThe Israel Museum, Jerusalem was founded in 1965 as Israel's national museum. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, near the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
, Jerusalem. Curator: Yigal Zalmona. (2003) - "Abel Pann - The painter of The Bible, Catalogue by Shlomit Steinberg and Felix Salten, The Jewish Museum, Vienn (2001).
- Abel Pann, Mayanot GalleryMayanot GalleryMayanot Gallery is an art gallery located on King George Street in Jerusalem.The gallery was opened in 1986 by Yael Gahnassia, soon after she emigrated to Jerusalem form Paris...
, Jerusalem. (1987) - Paintings, Drawings, and Lithograph by Abel Pann," Art Institute of ChicagoArt Institute of ChicagoThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, (1920)
Books and articles
Shlomit Steinberg (1991) 'The Image of the Biblical Woman as Femme Fatale in Abel Pann Works' (Jerusalem): MA Thesis, The Hebrew UniversityYigal Zalmona (2003), The art of Abel Pann: from Montparnasse to the Bible, Jerusalem: The Israeli Museum.