RYBACK, Issachar Ber (1897-1935)

Born in Ukraine in 1897, Ryback is generally regarded as an important contributor to the Jewish Art Movement in Russia. In 1919-1920, he lived in Moscow and worked in close association with the artists of the Russian avant-garde and in particular with El Lissitsky, Pevsner and Gabo. In 1921 he moved to Berlin where he was associated with Der Sturm and in 1925, he was invited back to Soviet Russia to design sets and costumes for the Moscow theater. In 1926, he settled finally in Paris where he gave up abstract work and sought a new form of expression. He held his first one-man show in Paris in 1928 and later exhibited in Holland (1930) and Belgium (1932). In 1935, on the eve of his first large retrospective at the Wildenstein Galleries in Paris, he suddenly died.