Lucia was part of everything he created, and he wouldn’t have achieved what he did without her.
—Galina Lembersky, Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour, 2022
Biography
Felix Lembersky (1913-1970) was a painter, a theater stage designer, a teacher, and a leader of artistic groups. He had his start in Soviet Avant-Garde in Ukraine before moving on to study realist painting in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), Soviet Russia, and created work in realist and modernist styles that fell outside of Soviet-mandated Socialist Realism. His Execution: Babyn Yar series (ca. 1944-52) are the earliest artistic representation of Babyn Yar, a Holocaust site in Kyiv. For political reasons, these paintings and his later nonconformist work were not allowed to be exhibited in the Soviet Union.
A witness to two world wars, the revolution, and terror, Lembersky offers a candid reflection of those events, infusing his images with hope and optimism. He turns to vulnerable, neglected, and marginalized people: children, the elderly, ethnic minorities, and industrial workers who are forced into unbearable labor and dangerous work environments. Regardless of their circumstances, he shows their humanity with empathy and admiration.
The abstracted compositions of his later years are visual riddles. We, his viewers, are not passive observers but participants in completing his art. The ambiguity in his works provokes a question, What do you see? We have to bring our own experiences and interpretive thinking to decode this art.
The picturesque beauty of a small town and the generous Ukrainian land awoke in me the love for painting. . .
—Felix Lembersky, Autobiography, 1960
TIMELINE
1913 Born in 1913, Lublin, Poland to Samuil Lembersky and Haia Perla (Luba), a pianist. His parents were Ashkenazi Jews.
1914 World War II begins; Poland is the center of fighting
1914-15 Family become refugees and resettle in Berdichyv, Western Ukraine, within the Russian Empire borders. War expands to Ukraine. Samuil Lembersky is injured.
1917 The Russian Revolution.
1918-1921 Civil War in Ukraine. Violence against civilians continues. Lembersky’s mother works as a caregiver at an orphanage in Berdichev.
1928-30 Felix Lembersky moves to Kyiv to study at the Jewish Arts & Trades school, founded by Kultur-Lige and led by artist Mark Epshtein. Kultur-Lige participants included Mark Chagall, El Lissitzky, Issachar Ber-Ryback, among others.
1929-30s Takes part in the Soviet Avant-Garde and attends exhibitions of major Ukrainian Avant-Garde artists, including Alexandra Exter, Victor Palmov, Oleksnader Bogomazov, and Michalo Boychuk. Works as an artist and theater sets designer in Kyiv. Designs city decorations and creates workers’ portrait gallery in Berdychiv.
1932 Stalin bans independent artistic movements and enforces Socialist Realism.
1932-33 Holodomor, a famine in Ukraine, took the lives of several million people, mostly Ukrainian farmers. Stalin Terror begins.
1933-34 Lembersky studies at Kyiv Art Institute. Isaak Brodsky, a president of the Academy of Art in Leningrad, invites Lembersky to study at the Academy.
1935-41 Moves to Leningrad to study painting at the Academy of Art, also known as Repin Institute of Art. Meets Lucia Keiserman (1915–1994), his future wife. Studies at the studio of Boris Ioganson. Visits the studios of Pavel Filonov.
1941 Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Ukraine is occupied in the first weeks of the war. Lembersky’s parents are among 30,000 Jews murdered during Holocaust in Berdychiv.
Lembersky joins the defense of Leningrad, is wounded and remains in the city during the first winter of the Siege. Graduates from the Academy with high honors, defending his thesis painting in the besieged Leningrad in December, 1941.
1942 Striken with dystrophy, Lembersky moves to the Urals; works as an embedded journalist-artist recording industrial home-front in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) and Nizhny Tagil. Teaches art and organizes an art museum and artists’ union in Nizhny Tagil.
1944-50s Returns to Leningrad in 1944. Joins Leningrad Union of Artists. Marries Lucia Keiserman; daughter, Galya (Galina) is born in 1945. Teaches at Stieglitz Academy of Art, 1946-47, and organizes a student group at his studio. Realist paintings collected by museums.
Stalin bans the discussion of Holocaust. Creates Execution: Babyn Yar series, 1944-52; for political reasons these paintings are not allowed to be exhibited in the Soviet Union.
1953 Stalin dies. Khurschev takes the leadership of the Soviet Union.
Mid 1950s and early ‘60s The Thaw, a brief period of reforms and relative freedom in the arts. Lembersky travels to Nizhny Tagil; begins to change from realist to expressionist painting.
1960s The end of Thaw, renewed political repressions. Lembesky is accused of “formalism”. His expressionist nonconformist art cannot be exhibited in the Soviet Union.
1970 Felix Lembersky died in Leningrad.
1970s Nonconformist art is kept from public view. Nonconforming artists are persecuted, their art is destroyed by Soviet agents. Lembersky’s family organizes small exhibitions at their home.
1980s Family moves paintings to the United States
1991 The collapse of the Soviet Union
2009 Felix Lembersky: Paintings and Drawings, first comprehensive catalogue, is published in English and Russian.
2010s Exhibitions of Lembersky’s art in the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia.
2022 Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour: Memories of Soviet Russia, a mother-and-daughter’s memoir, tells the story of life in Russia and their journey to save Felix Lembersky’s art.
FELIX LEMBERSKY. MY FATHER
by Galina Lembersky
My father was an artist, a citizen, a teacher, and a leader. It is virtually impossible for me to tell about him in the allotted space.
Some artists paint as an expression of their perception of beauty. Others offer insight into their innermost selves. For my father, art was the expression of a unified vision –– not disparate segments that occupy a common space but an integrated and interwoven tapestry on canvas wherein all segments are part of a whole. The unity is greater than the sum of its parts, yet incomplete if any part is missing. All is essential; nothing is extraneous.
My father’s life as an artist spanned twenty-six years. He was a prodigy at Kiev Art Institute and the Leningrad Academy of Art, respected as one of its most talented graduates. Under the Stalinist regime, my father was offered fame, wealth, position, and endless opportunities to paint, exhibit his work, and to become, perhaps, the greatest artist that the Soviet Union had ever and would ever produce.
For my father, the life he was offered would have resulted in his being a failure. Fame, wealth, and the other trappings that were laid before him meant nothing. For him, honesty and integrity meant more than anything else. He refused to pay the heavy price of creating dictated art. For him, art was an expression of freedom, individuality, and personalized creativity, without which it ceased to be art.
My father was seriously wounded in the defense of Leningrad. Hospitalized, he spent six months in the besieged city and, while not yet fully recovered, he completed his thesis, graduated from the Academy, and transported food and supplies into Leningrad across frozen Ladoga Lake under the fire. Then afflicted with dystrophy, he was evacuated to the Urals, Russia's industrial home front, where he continued to serve his country and the war effort –– through art. Despite his physical weakness, the time he spent in the Urals was far from unproductive. He painted, he taught, he organized exhibitions, and he established a museum and an art school. He created art focused on his vision of the interconnection of workers, industry, and the land. Subsequently, my father was invited to return to the Academy of Art, with all the prominence that such appointment would entail. It was at that point when my father first confronted his defining challenge. Without a moment of hesitation, he refused the grand offer and chose instead poverty, persecution, and deprivation. For him, freedom of thought, art, expression, creativity, and truth were his most cherished possessions.
At the same time, his courage and hope for a better future masked his pain and made it more bearable. All of this was, in fact, the totality and unity of the fabric of my father’s life. This is how he lived. This is what he modeled for others. This is how he taught. This is who he was. And this, combined with the creation of his art, became his legacy.
—Boston, 2011