This chapter focuses on Jerzy Malinowski's Malarstwo i rzeźba Żydów polskich w XIX i XX wieku (The Painting and Sculpture of Polish Jews in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). Among the men Jerzy Malinowski, an authority on Polish art and Polish Jewish culture, discusses are many unknown or virtually unknown artists. He begins his story in the mid-nineteenth century with the appearance of the first Polish artists of Jewish origin, of whom Aleksander Lesser was the most important. This was an easy decision, but other decisions made by the author are more difficult and more problematic. What exactly does he mean by Polish Jewish artists? More significant is the question of what Malinowski means by ‘Jewish artists’ and ‘Jewish art’. In his very brief introduction, he explains that he has included artists who identified themselves as belonging to the Jewish national camp, and artists who, even if they did not identify themselves in this way, took an active part in Jewish life. Those who qualify on neither of these grounds are branded as ‘assimilationists’ and omitted.
Jews of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: 1918–1939