Joseph Constant

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Joseph Constant (born July 14, 1892 in Jaffa , Ottoman Empire ; died October 3, 1969 in Paris ) was a French-Israeli sculptor under the name Constant and a Russian-French writer under the pseudonym Michel Matveev .

Life

Joseph Constantinovsky grew up in Odessa in the Russian Empire , where he experienced the revolution of 1905 as a child . He attended the Art Academy in Odessa from 1914. During the October Revolution of 1917 he was an inspector for art in kindergartens and workers' clubs in St. Petersburg and Moscow . After his father and brother were murdered in a pogrom in Ukraine in 1919 , he fled with his wife to Palestine, where he painted in an artists' colony in Tel Aviv . In 1923 he came to Paris. From 1927 he exhibited in the Salon d'Automne , from 1928 to 1931 in the Salon des Indépendants , in 1932 and 1933 in the Salon des Tuileries . Constant initially painted expressionist landscapes and portraits and later concentrated on sculpture .

In order to improve his miserable existence, under the influence of Pierre Morhange , he began to write under the pseudonym Michel Matveev, from the beginning in French. His first book, which takes place in the revolution of 1905, was published in 1928. His novel on the exodus of the Jews, Les traqués , was published in 1933. The volume of stories Étrange famille received the 1936 Prix ​​des Deux Magots .

How Constant survived the German occupation of France and the persecution of the Jews is not known. After the establishment of the State of Israel, he also worked there as a sculptor in Kibbutz En Harod , from 1962 he had a second studio in Ramat Gan in addition to his studio in Paris , where a small museum was later set up. In 1959 he published his childhood memories under the title Ailleurs autrefois .

Sculpture in the Ticho House Museum in Jerusalem
Joseph Constant house in Ramat Gan

Fonts (selection)

  • Les hommes du 1905 russian . 1928
    • The army of nameless revolutionaries . Translation and afterword Rudolf von Bitter. Bonn: Weidle, 2014
  • Les traqués . Paris: Gallimard, 1933
    • The hunted . Translation and afterword Rudolf von Bitter. Bonn: Weidle, 2010
  • Étrange Famille . Paris: Gallimard, 1936
  • Henri Barbusse (ed.): Lettres de Lénine à sa famille . Collaboration with Alfred Kurella , translation by Pierre Morhange and Michel Matvéev. Paris: Rieder, 1936
  • La cité des peintres . Paris: Atlas, 1947
    • The painter's quarter . Translation and afterword Rudolf von Bitter. Bonn: Weidle, 2016
  • Ailleurs autrefois . Paris: Gallimard, 1959

literature

  • KS-D .: Constantinovsky (Constantinovič), Joseph (called Constant, Joseph) . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 20, Saur, Munich a. a. 1998, ISBN 3-598-22760-4 , p. 590.
  • Raffaele Zanotti: Le Son de l'Est de Michel Matveev , in: Murielle Lucie Clément (ed.): Écrivains Franco-russes . Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008, pp. 59-68

Web links

Commons : Joseph Constant  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information about the date of death in Zanotti. According to AKL, he died in Paris on October 2nd
  2. ↑ on Pierre Morhange see Pierre Morhange , at: Anonymes, Justes et Persécutés durant la période Nazie dans les communes de France (ajpn)
  3. ↑ Christoph Haacker: The army of the nameless refugees . Review, in: NZZ , October 22, 2016, p. 31
personal data
SURNAME Constant, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Constantinovsky, Joseph (maiden name); Matveev, Michel (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French-Israeli sculptor and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Jaffa
DATE OF DEATH 2nd October 1969
Place of death Paris