Anatoly Lvovich Kaplan

Anatoli Lwowitsch Kaplan ( Russian Анатолий Львович Каплан , with a Jewish first name: Tanchum (= consolation); * December 28, 1902 in Rahachou , Belarus ; † July 3, 1980 in Leningrad ) was a Russian-Jewish painter, sculptor and graphic artist.

Life

Anatoli Lwowitsch Kaplan grew up with five siblings in Rogachev. At that time the town was within the Jewish Pale of Settlement . In the year after Anatolis was born, it was hit by severe pogroms. The father was a slaughterhouse and owned a small meat shop. Later he had to work in the slaughterhouse to support his large family.

Despite the poor conditions, Anatoly received a good education. He first went to religious elementary school , where he learned Hebrew and studied the Talmud . From the age of twelve he attended the Russian state school. His artistic inclination showed up early on. He practiced with dedication in pencil drawings and watercolors. His professional goal was to be a drawing teacher. He did so in his hometown before he was even educated.

The October Revolution brought him, as a child of the lower class, a favorable turn. In 1922 he was delegated to the Art Academy in Petrograd (later Leningrad ). After graduating in 1927, he stayed in this city. It became his home until the end of his life, even if he kept visiting the places of his childhood.

Kaplan made his way as a freelance artist, accepting whatever jobs were available, whether as a commercial artist, set designer, interior designer or illustrator.

In the thirties he worked in a group of painters and lithographers who thematized life in the “ Autonomous Jewish Republic ”. Stalin had created this district in the far east of Russia with the intention of relocating the Jewish population there.

During the war, Kaplan and his family were evacuated from Leningrad to the Urals. Here he had to cope with difficult working conditions, he also had to give drawing lessons again. In 1944 he returned to Leningrad. He took the suffering of the besieged city as the subject of an extensive series of lithographs.

For a while, he was given the task of overseeing the designs in a glass factory. This sparked his interest in the third dimension and created the basis for his later work as a sculptor and art potter.

Kaplan always remained loyal to painting, although his paintings - because of the predominantly Jewish motifs - were rarely exhibited in the Soviet era. It was not until 1995 that an extensive retrospective took place in the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg .

plant

Kaplan's childhood environment was not unlike that of Marc Chagall , who was born a generation earlier, in 1887. Even if the lives of the two artists were very different, they have a lot in common in their work. The shtetl figures and scenes in particular play a major role in both. Likewise, the autobiographical references, as they are quite evident in Kaplan's paintings “Metzgerladen” (1972) and “Schneiderladen” (1975), as well as in many illustrations to works by the writer Scholem Alejchem .

At the academy, Kaplan was primarily trained as a painter. Because he couldn't earn his living with it in the years that followed, he had to take on all kinds of tasks. As a result, he acquired routine in decorative and striking work as well as in a wide variety of techniques, including the handling of writing and ornaments.

In 1937 he received an order from the Leningrad Ethnographic Museum to create a series of lithographs for the Jewish section. Only now, in the experimental workshop of the Leningrad Artists' Union, did Kaplan systematically learn the techniques of printmaking. He also developed his own procedures. He called his first series of lithographs (1937–1940) "Kasrilevke" (after a village in a story by Scholem Alejchem ).

The war brought a severe cut in Kaplan's artistic work. Only in 1944, after returning from the evacuation in the Urals, was he able to resume work. He immediately began a series of lithographs about the sufferings of his city. In 1946 the portfolio "Leningrad in the days of the blockade" was published. Kaplan continued the sequence of images until the end of the 1950s and included the reconstruction.

From 1953 onwards, Kaplan concentrated entirely on Jewish issues. With this he constantly and seriously offended the Soviet cultural authorities. Particularly noteworthy among the works of this era are the illustrations for “Jewish Folk Songs” by Dmitri Shostakovich , for Scholem Alejchems “ Tevye, the Milkman ”, “The Bewitched Tailor” and “Stempenju” and for Mendele Moicher Sforim's “Fischke the Lame”.

From 1967 onwards, Kaplan mainly created ceramics and sculptures, including a remarkable set of characters from Gogol's novel " The Dead Souls ". In terms of shapes and colors, he demonstrates a fantastic, playful approach to the material.

Illustrations for German-language book editions - selection

• Sholem Alejchem : Tevye the milkman . With reproductions of lithographs. Verlag der Kunst Dresden (fourth print of the Leipziger Presse), 1967
• Scholem Alejchem: The bewitched tailor. With reproductions of 26 color lithographs. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin, 1969
• Johannes Bobrowski: Lewin's mill. 34 sentences about my grandfather. With reproductions of pencil drawings. Union Verlag, Berlin, 1975
• Mendele Mojcher Sforim : Fischke the lame. Beggar novel . With reproductions of 26 lithographs. Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig, 1978
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing : Nathan the wise. With reproductions of 15 chalk drawings. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1978
• The legend of the kid. With reproductions of color lithographs. Edition Holz at children's book publisher Berlin, 1981
• Mendele Moicher Sforim, Scholem Alechem, Jizchok Leib Perez : The Rebben's pipe pipe. Humorous stories from Yiddish . With reproductions of 33 pastels, gouaches and oil paintings. Eulenspiegel Verlag Berlin, 1983
• Eastern Jewish legends. With reproductions of 52 pastels. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag Leipzig and Weimar, 1983
• Scholem Alejchem, The Progress in Kasrilevke and other old stories from more recent times. With reproductions of 26 lithographs. Book publisher Der Morgen, Berlin, 1990

literature

• Anatoly Lvovich Kaplan. Colored ceramics. Insel Verlag, Leipzig (Insel-Bücherei No. 975), 1973

• Beate Jahn-Zechendorff (Ed.): Anatoli L. Kaplan. Variations on Yiddish Folk Songs. With 32 colored plates. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig (Insel-Bücherei No. 1012), 1976

• Gertrud Heider: Anatoli L. Kaplan Keramik , Union Verlag, Berlin, 1977
• Yuri Kuznetsov (ed.): Anatoli L. Kaplan. The graphic work. 1928-1977. Drawings, watercolors, gouaches, tempera paintings and pastels . With 222 partly colored plates and 55 text illustrations. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1979

• Claus Stephani : Nobody has drawn this world like this before . On the 100th birthday of Anatoly Kaplan. In: David. Jewish culture magazine (=  14th year ). No. 55 . Vienna December 2002, p. 24-25 ( online ).
• Claus Stephani: He often sat by the river and dreamed . On the 100th birthday of Anatoly Kaplan. In: Israel News . No. 10269 . Tel Aviv December 27, 2002, p. 6 .
• Claus Stephani: The image of the Jew in modern painting / Imaginea evreului în pictura modernă . An introduction / study introductiv. Ed .: Hasefer. Bucureşti 2005, ISBN 973-630-091-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Anatoli Lwowitsch Kaplan in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Anatoli Lwowitsch Kaplan in the library of the Jewish Museum Berlin