vernissage 12.10.2024 / exhibition until 04.02.2024 / Museum of Warsaw / Old Town Square 32
Straight from the Pompidou Center in Paris, an exhibition is coming to Warsaw that explores the figure and work of Moshe Vorobeichic, one of the leading European avant-garde artists of the 1920s - photographer, graphic designer, painter. He graduated from the Bauhaus, was active in Paris and there adopted the pseudonym Moi Ver. However, he repeatedly returned to Vilnius and Poland, where he photographed the Jewish world, which was soon to cease to exist. The Moi Ver exhibition will feature more than 300 objects: photographs, posters, publications, book designs, paintings and documents. Thanks to many years of work in the artist's archives, the Polish public will have the first opportunity to see the extremely rich and varied work of Vorobeichic, considered in France as one of the most prominent representatives of avant-garde photography. After Paris and Warsaw, the exhibition will travel to Tel Aviv next year. The opening of the Moi Ver exhibition at the Warsaw Museum will take place on October 12.
Moshe Vorobeichic, Moi Ver, Moshe Vorobeichic, Moshe Raviv...
... are the same person. A Central European Jew, a Zionist, born in 1904 in what is now Belarus, raised in Vilnius, studying in the Weimar Republic and Paris. Moi Ver was a versatile artist, an avant-garde painter and photographer, a Bauhaus graduate, a student of Fernand Léger and László Moholy-Nagy. He combined innovation of form with social sensitivity and political commitment in his work. He used the language of the avant-garde in his photography and graphics, and his visionary and uncompromising projects about the Jewish quarter in Vilnius, Paris or kibbutzim in Poland or Palestine are at the same time world-view manifestos. In the 1930s, Moi Ver took a total of more than 1,500 photographs of traditional Jewish communities in major cities and suburban towns. The hitherto scattered and unpublished photographs will be on display for the first time in such a wide selection at the Warsaw Museum.
Moï Ver - or Moshe Vorobeichic - is the protagonist of a monographic exhibition prepared by the Centre Pompidou and the Warsaw Museum. Moï Ver is a hitherto undiscovered avant-garde painter and photographer, a Bauhaus graduate, a student of Fernand Léger and László Moholy-Nagy. The show will include more than three hundred photographs, paintings, posters and publications from the artist's archive and several international collections.
From Vilnius to Paris via the Bauhaus
The exhibition will trace Vorobeichic's life and work, starting with the artist's first major project, more than 200 photographs of Vilnius' Jewish quarter, which is the most comprehensive, coherent and poignant photographic account of the site. These photographs were taken just after Vorobeichic graduated from the Bauhaus, the most influential school of modern design. Photography, as well as photomontage or photocollage, were treated there as modern tools of artistic expression. In 1929, Vorobeichic moved to Paris, where he took painting courses with Fernand Léger, co-founder of the avant-garde revolution in early 20th century art, and also studied at the Technical School of Photography and Cinematography. He began signing his works with Moi Ver. Photo book projects shown in the exhibition Paris (1931) and Opposite (1931) are among the greatest achievements of avant-garde photography. He also treated photography as a source of income - he belonged to the Fotoglobe agency, and published in the illustrated French and Polish press. He invariably returned to Poland and intensively photographed Jewish culture and daily life.
Polin - a look at a world that has ceased to exist
Between 1929 and 1937, Moi Ver took a total of more than 1,500 photographs of traditional Jewish communities in large cities and suburban towns. The artist was also interested in the Polish countryside, its folklore and inhabitants - Poles and Jews and their mutual relations. He photographed marketplaces and genre scenes, and made tightly framed, unposed, street portraits of bearded Jews, Polish peasant women and peasants. This is an exceptionally comprehensive collection of photographs of the daily life of Central European Jews, to the point of being of such high artistic value. The photographs are maintained in modern aesthetics and go beyond the documentary intent. Scattered and unpublished until now, this will be the first time they will be seen in such a wide selection at the Warsaw Museum.
Moi Ver also photographed hashbaras, or places where European Jewish youth were prepared for emigration to Palestine by learning to work in workshops or on the land, as well as lessons in the Hebrew language and geography of the region. In Poland in the late 1930s, there were about 200 such places - the most in Europe, and the largest hashara was located in Grochow, a district of Warsaw. Vorobeichic visited nearly 20 of them and took a total of more than 500 photographs of young people at work, study and rest, showing their enthusiasm, cooperation and commitment. The photos were then published in the organization's publications promoting its activities.
Palestine - a new country
After emigrating to Palestine in 1934, Vorobeichic committed his talents to Zionist organizations. He created hundreds of reportage photographs showing the construction of Tel Aviv and documenting the lives of settlers on kibbutzim. He designed posters, informational exhibitions and publications illustrated with photomontages maintained in the spirit of the European avant-garde.
In 1951 he adopted the name Moshe Raviv, and in 1953 settled permanently in the town of Safed in northern Israel, where he joined the artistic community. He abandoned his photographic practice in favor of returning to painting, as well as drawing or printmaking. For the rest of his life he created and exhibited extensively. His paintings drew on Kabbalah, mystical writings, Hasidism and Jewish folklore, although references to his years at the Bauhaus can be found in his late paintings.
A unique exhibition of avant-garde photography
Moi Ver was among the masters of avant-garde photography of the 20th century. Masters forgotten, only discovered today - says Karolina Ziębińska-Lewandowska, co-curator of the exhibition, who has been researching Moshe Vorobeichic's artistic output for many years. - Rarely do we have the opportunity to see such good modern photography of the interwar period in Poland, and this exhibition reveals to us the work of an artist of extraordinary talent and fascinating biography. It is worth looking at Vilnius, Paris, Warsaw, Polish towns and Palestinian-Israeli kibbutzim through the radical eye of Vorobeichic's camera.
Accompanying program: guided tours, lectures and workshops
The exhibition is accompanied by a rich program of events: guided tours, lectures and workshops. On each Sunday at 4 pm There will be guided tours - curatorial and author tours with invited guests. Guides will include Hanka Grupinska, Joanna Kinowska, Marcin Wicha, Rafael Lewandowski, Piotr Rypson, Maciej Szymanowicz and Mikołaj Łoziński. The curatorial tour on December 17 will be translated into Polish sign language.
The lectures will be held in selected Tuesdays. Topics: modern photography, Vilnius - the capital of the Jewish avant-garde, Polish and Lithuanian Jewish photography of the interwar period, the photographic book in the 1930s, and the avant-garde Bauhaus university where Moi Ver studied. The lectures will be given by Weronika Kobylinska, Joanna Degler, Lukasz Gorczyca and Gabriela Switek, among others.
A special highlight of the program will be workshops on noble photographic techniques - cyanotype and Van Dyke bronze. During the workshop, participants will learn about the principles of composition, the history of the techniques or the principles of multiple exposure. At the collage workshop, the theoretical part will explain the differences between collage, photocollage and photomontage, and the practice will be to create your own work.
The social-photography workshop is a proposal for young people. Photos from the exhibition will be the starting point for a conversation about pre-war experimental and social photography. Topics include photographic portraiture (ways of depicting figures, framing, light) or urban photographic landscape. After looking at ways of representation, framing, light, participants will create portrait photos and photographic stories about Warsaw.
Part of the program to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Exhibition Moi Ver presents the work of the artist, who until 1939 was a Polish citizen, a Zionist who worked through his photography to promote the emigration of Jewish youth to Palestine. The Museum of Warsaw tells the story of a city whose nearly 30% community before World War II consisted of Jews, and consistently includes in its program of exhibitions and publications topics that explore the fate of the capital's largest minority. Celebration program: www.warsaw1943.pl.
Exhibition Moi Ver is organized by the Pompidou Center in cooperation with the Museum of Warsaw and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The exhibition was presented at the Pompidou Center from April 20 to August 29, 2023.
Exhibition Moi Ver will run from October 12, 2023 to February 4, 2024 at the Museum of Warsaw in the Old Town Square 32 The museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets: PLN 20 / PLN 15, free admission on Thursdays.