Gatherings of Jewish Artists in Interwar Lithuania

Summary The main subject of this paper is the Jewish artists of interwar Lithuania and their efforts to unite. It analyses the aspirations of Jewish artists to unite into groups, to represent and present their art, and to maintain their national identity. The article introduces the main organisers, participants, circumstances and goals of the artists’ gatherings. It discusses three cases: the cultural policy pursued by National Jewish Council’s Section of Culture at the institutional level; Jewish artists who gathered on a social basis; and the Art Gallery of Neemiya Arbit Blatas as a unique exhibition space in inter-war Lithuania, which mainly exhibited the works of Jewish artists. The paper focuses not on the artistic legacy or its value, but rather on the processes of cultural life of Jewish artists in interwar Lithuania.

Musical Cosmopolitanism in Central America: in search of an Obituary of Alejandro Cousin (ca. 1835 - 1910)

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the countries of Central America incorporated European musicians into their state-generated projects. Administrations from Guatemala to Costa Rica appointed composers from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Spain to help stimulate national musical culture and education, giving them leadership roles in state institutions. Belgian composer and conductor Alejandro Cousin arrived in the late 1850s and spent the rest of his life in El Salvador and Nicaragua where he established the national military band. This article, in the form of an obituary, sheds light on his noteworthy artistic legacy in Central America.

Remembered: Zofia Rydet in the Biographically-Oriented Perspective of the Sociology of Art

Zofia Rydet is one of the most outstanding Polish and even European artists of the second half of the 20th century. She left a huge artistic legacy, but her biography still in many respects remains a mystery. The memory of a great artist is often mythologized, and the interpretation of the work after his/her death begins to separate from the original intentions of the creator. These are processes of great interest to art historians and sociologists alike. They can be studied by adopting the methods of the biographically-oriented sociology of art. This article uses some of these methods, namely the analysis of the existing documents, archival research, and interviews. The analysis of the collected material has revealed how Rydet was remembered by those who had the opportunity to meet her, accompanied her during field trips, and talked with her about art and photography. The aim of such research is to try to get to know the artist better, as well as to understand her work and the social functioning in what was a very specific time and environment.

The Italian coffee triangle: From Brazilian colonos to Ethiopian colonialisti

This article investigates the history of coffee culture across three continents during the Fascist ventennio (1922–45.) By using the novel framework of coffee, from the bean in the field to the machine in the caffè, it connects interwar histories that previously have been explored independently. Specifically, it examines the transnational economics of coffee bean trade routes and the colonial imagery of coffee advertising to argue that caffès emerged as key sites for promoting the Fascist imperial projects in East Africa – an architectural and artistic legacy that remains in place today. Ultimately, this trajectory broadens the way that we understand how food and farming became politicised during the Fascist period. By untangling the interwar trade of beans and bodies between Italy, Brazil, and Ethiopia, this article brings to light an untold story of caffeinated imperial aggression and resistance.

"Look at the Sky and Tell the Weather" The art and science of Eric Cloane

<p>Eric Sloane was a 20th century artist who created a unique style and provided interesting, idiosyncratic, and informative images of clouds. He was the author of many books, but also created massive cloud murals, including one on an entire wall at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC. Sloane became interested in clouds when he flew as a passenger with some of the pioneers of aviation, including Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post. He also became weatherwise through his early employment as a painter of advertisements on yje sides of  barns, allowing him to observe many aspects of weather. Sloane received many awards for his contributions to science, including a special award from the American Meteorological Society in 185 for  “for pioneering contributions to public awareness of clouds, their beauty, complexity, and scientific importnace; for an artistic legacy to all who feel a sense of wonder when they look at a cloud filled sky.”</p>

Kreativität und Migration : Positionierung und Ambiguität im Œuvre des russlanddeutschen Künstlers Georg Schlicht (1886-1964)

The phrase “German by passport, Russian by heart” summarizes, but at the same time simplifies the complex artistic legacy of Georg Schlicht. Schlicht was born into a family of Volga Germans, brought up in Saratov and educated in Moscow, but was forced to leave Russia in the aftermath of the 1917 upheavals. His creativity reflects the ideological twists and turns of his lifetime and his legacy mirrors his belonging, in the sense of his whereabouts in Germany, the land of his fathers, and the longing for his spiritual home in Tsarist Russia, a country that had ceased to exist. The aesthetic dichotomy of his oeuvre is the theme of this volume, in which an international team of researchers from Britain, Germany, Russia, Belarus and the Netherlands have undertaken, for the first time, to chart and illuminate the various stations of Schlicht’s life and art – an existence that swayed between his Russian motherland and his German fatherland. Rather than applying the (received) reflectionalist model of the relationship between history and culture, they argue in favour of categories such as settlement and mobility, appreciation and neglect, positioning and ambiguity as three modes characteristic of the artistic legacy of migrating people and ideologies. Der Band „Kreativität und Migration. Positionierung und Ambiguität im OEuvre des russlanddeutschen Künstlers Georg Schlicht (1886-1964)“ thematisiert das Außenseiter- und Grenzgängertum einer von dramatischen politischen Umbrüchen gezeichneten Existenz in der Diaspora und deren komplexe und widerspruchsvolle künstlerische Verarbeitung. Schlicht wuchs in Saratov als Sohn eines wolgadeutschen Vaters und einer russischen Mutter auf. Seine künstlerische Ausbildung erhielt er in Moskau. Doch als Reichsdeutscher mit deutschem Pass musste er Russland nach der Revolution von 1917 verlassen und gelangte nach Berlin. Später gehörten Eisenach und Hamburg zu seinen Wohn- und Arbeitsorten und in der NS- und Nachkriegszeit wieder Berlin. Dem Vermächtnis dieses Künstlers widmet sich nun erstmals ein internationales Forscherteam aus Belarus, Deutschland, Großbritannien, den Niederlanden und Russland. Die hier versammelten Beiträge von Ada Raev, Tat’jana Savickaja, Olga Litzenberger, Victor Dönninghaus, Igor Dukhan, Susanne Marten-Finnis, Albert Lemmens, Serge Stommels und Nicolas Dreyer beleuchten den Werdegang von Georg Schlicht aus transkultureller Perspektive. Sie orientieren sich an den Parametern Positionierung und Ambiguität, Mobilität und Sesshaftigkeit, Zuspruch und Ablehnung. Damit erkundet der vorliegende Band Schlichts Prägungen als Russlanddeutscher und verortet das Festhalten dieses Künstlers am Althergebrachten – seine facettenreiche Rückwärtsgewandtheit und Kritik der Moderne – sowohl im Kontext der Russischen Emigration als auch der europäischen Geistes- und Ideengeschichte.

Naturalism in the Painting of the Leiden School and its Chief Representatives

The article is devoted to Dutch art — the Leiden School in Holland in the 17th century. The author analyzes the defi nition, particularities and the theoretic foundations of the characteristics and the artistic legacy of the painters — the representatives of the Leiden school and also demonstrates the close connection between naturalism and the particularities of the paintings of the school’s adherents and the uniqueness of the works by such masters as Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris the Elder.

L’Italia di Paweł Hertz

The article is an attempt at reconstructing the remarks by Paweł Hertz (essayist, poet, translator, writer and publisher) on Italy and its artistic legacy. A short presentation of the writer is followed by a discussion of his actual journeys in Italy based on the available autobiographical material. Next,there are reflections on Hertz’s interest in Italian literature and European texts about Italy (based on essays and editorial work). Treated as a separate issue is the view of Italian art through the prism of Polish artistic work (the spheres of associations, interference and references) in Hertz’s journalism. Other issues discussed in the article cover poems about Italy, their placeamong the writer’s works and the main threads and motifs. The article’s final notes focus on the observations on the value of Polish reception of Italian cultural legacy and its basic aspects that Hertz regularly emphasised at various stages of his creative life.

El papel de las exposiciones en la escritura de la (androcéntrica) historia del arte del País Vasco = The Role of Exhibitions in the Writing of the (Androcentric) History of Art of the Basque Country

Este artículo aborda desde una perspectiva feminista la importancia que han tenido las exposiciones a la hora de escribir, consolidar y naturalizar la historia del arte del País Vasco de los años 1950-1975. A partir de una revisión que comienza en la década de los setenta, se estudia cuáles han sido las tendencias más usuales a la hora de presentar a través de los medios expositivos este pasado artístico y, por tanto, cómo se relaciona este hecho con la sistemática invisibilización que vienen sufriendo desde entonces las artistas que produjeron obra en el periodo señalado. Por último, se cuestiona si con el paso de los años, las demandas feministas han tenido el impacto deseado en la manera de exhibir este legado histórico-artístico o si, por el contrario, todavía quedan tareas pendientes.AbstractThis article addresses from a feminist perspective the importance that exhibitions have had in the task of writing, consolidating and naturalizing the history of art in the Basque Country in the years 1950-1975. Based on a review that begins in the 1970s, the text studies the most common trends in presenting this artistic past through exhibitions and, therefore, how this is related to the systematic invisibility that artists who produced work in this period have suffered since then. Finally, it is questioned whether, over the years, feminist demands have had the desired impact on the way this historical-artistic legacy is exhibited or whether, on the contrary, there is still work to be done.