Art Comes Before Anything Else
Until recently, we could not speak truthfully, because we were told that art cannot have contradictions, that we must create polished heroes… To create such heroes is to steal from people. This is not the essence of truth.
—Felix Lembersky, 1956
THE UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS are invited to a lecture and opening of an interactive virtual exhibit on the art of Felix Lembersky. With images of her grandfather’s work, UM alum Yelena Lembersky expands on her award-winning memoir, Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour: Memories of Soviet Russia (2022), co-authored with her mother Galina Lembersky. The family tenet, “Art comes before anything else,” is actualized in the heroic struggle to preserve a father and grandfather’s paintings in the face of Soviet oppression.
Students in Elizabeth Goodenough’s seminar “Children Under Fire” join others in responding to three generations of the Lembersky family’s resistance through art.
Virtual exhibition and the event are sponsored by the University of Michigan, LSA /College of Literature, Science, and Arts; Arts Initiative; Arts and Resistance LSA Theme Semester; Residential College; Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, Global Scholars Program, and the Uniterra Foundation.
Refreshments and book signing to follow.
October 30, 2023 2:30-4:30 Space 2435, North Quad, University of Michigan, 105 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI
ON VIEW. VIRTUAL EXHIBITIONS
I attempt to uncover hidden spirituality in nature, to express objects as a metaphor.
—Felix Lembersky, 1960
I want to show the inner state of oppression and pensiveness that announces the awakening of thought.
—Felix Lembersky, thesis during the Siege of Leningrad, December 1941
Those of us who believe in democracy must fight back daily and art is one weapon among many—though art is a million things besides a weapon.
—James Leaf, 2016
Michigan Quaterly Review, Summer 2019
Realism is an infinite and eternal form of art. The entire history of art is Realism. Each generation creates their own realism and defines it according to their own vision.
—Felix Lembersky, ca. 1956–63
SEARCH AND EXPLORE. BY TITLE, DATE, GENRE, MEDIA,
ART FOR THIS MOMENT. PERSONAL RESPONSES TO PAINTINGS
I was struck by the fact that many historians of Russian art had not previously known of his work - an indication of how profoundly ignorant we ALL still remain with regard to Soviet culture and how much work we still have to do to compensate for the silences and confusions brought about by censorship and propaganda.
— Robert Chandler, London, 2012
LIKE A DROP OF INK IN A DOWNPOUR
I learned from my parents that art comes before anything else. It forms culture, memory, history, and philosophy that will last for centuries.
—Galina Lembersky, Boston, 2022
At Father’s retrospective exhibition, people poured in and called his work a breath of fresh air. This was in 1960, during Khrushchev’s Thaw, a brief period when artists were allowed a bit of creative freedom. Father’s art kept changing, but Soviet art policies reversed, and for political reasons his paintings could no longer be exhibited.
—Galina Lembersky, Boston, 2022
STORIES IN MOTION. VIDEOS. SLIDESHOWS. CONVERSATIONS
Felix Lembersky in Color, a short film with footage of Lembersky’s exhibition in Leningrad, 1960, and a selection of his art
