Exhibition and lecture project "East of Reuben Mazel"

The exhibition and lecture project "The East of Reuben Mazel" is dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding orientalist artist Ilya (Reuben) Moiseevich Mazel (1890-1967).

A native of the Pale of Settlement, the son of a Vitebsk violinist, who graduated from the cheder and the art school of Yu.M. Pen (1854-1937), Reuben Mazel went through the art workshops of Germany, but revealed himself as a true artist, having come into contact with the East. The deserts and colors of Turkmenistan, and later the Caucasus, awakened in his genetic memory the images of the Holy Land and Jerusalem, captured by the artist in biblical subjects on canvas, in graphics, watercolors and transmitted allegorically in the images of ordinary people, through their way of life, artistic traditions, including carpet weaving and music.

Throughout the complex history of the twentieth century, the East has been a refuge for those persecuted from wars, pogroms, violence and hunger and remains a gracious granary that receives and warms with the warmth of its land, giving love to all who can feel it and accept it. The artist’s heart, filled with joy and happiness from contact with nature, images and art of the eastern edge of his native country, generously responded with a grateful feeling: “Here my old passion for the East woke up, and it seemed to me that I had found what I had been looking for for a long time…” (R Mazel. Notes. Manuscript).

"East of Reuben Mazel" is a common noun image of eternal memory that helps to survive through the centuries, collecting the present from scattered atoms of the past, applying stone to stone, perch to perch in restoring the lost harmony of things. Natalia Apchinskaya (1937–2014), the first researcher of the work of Reuben Mazel, called him a vivid example of “a Jewish artist who preserves national identity and at the same time is in love with a different, albeit related culture” (N. Apchinskaya, 2004). In this, the harmonious unity of the West and the East is preserved, which has presented the world with kind, bright and in its own way unique examples of Mazel’s art - the art of seeing one’s own through someone else’s and loving someone else’s as one’s own.

The central theme of the exposition - the memory of Jerusalem and the Holy Land - rooted in the artist’s work, permeates all the events of the "Week of Jewish Art at the GII" (May 17-21) - from the exhibition and lectures by leading Russian and foreign art critics, concerts of classical and traditional Jewish music, before the First International Interdisciplinary Session on Jewish Art (May 20-21).

The second competition for grants of the Russian Jewish Congress for the development of museum and exhibition projects in the field of Jewish culture, of which the project became the laureate, determined the winners in 2020. 64 applications from 36 cities were received for consideration by the expert council, and 20 projects were included in the short-list compiled by the experts, which was considered by the jury. In April this year, RJC announced the acceptance of applications for its Third Competition for Museum and Exhibition Grants. By tradition, any non-profit, budgetary and public organizations will be able to participate in it: theaters, museums, community centers, research institutes that have online or offline presentation platforms. The deadline for applications is June 15, 2021).