Author Description

Jewish Painters of Montreal refers to a group of artists who depicted the social realism of Montreal during the 1930s and 1940s. First used by the media to describe participants of the annual YMHA-YWHA art exhibition, the term was popularized in the 1980s by art historian and curator Esther Trepannier.[1] Since then these artists have been exhibited collectively in public galleries across Canada. In 2009 the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec mounted a touring exhibition Jewish Painters of Montreal: a Witness to their time 1930-1948[2] which renewed interest in the group in Montreal,[3] Toronto,[4] and Vancouver.[5] This collective included two generations of painters - established artists: Jack Beder (1910-1987), Alexandre Bercovitch (1891-1951), Eric Goldberg (1890-1959), Louis Muhlstock (1904-2001); those in mid-career: Sam Borenstein (1908-1969), Herman Heimlich (1904-1986), Harry Mayerovitch (1910-2004), Bernard Mayman (1885-1966), Ernst Neumann (1907-1956), Fanny Wiselberg (1906-1986); and those just beginning: Sylvia Ary (1923-2011), Rita Briansky (1925), Ghitta Caiserman-Roth (1923-2005), Alfred Pinsky (1921-1999), and Moses "Moe" Reinblatt (1917-1979).[6] As a group during the 30s and 40s, they were united in their choice of subjects - the human figure, Montreal and its people, and the war.[2] As individual artists, their style varied from socialist realism to stylized expressionism with some the subject of recent museum exhibitions in Montreal, Ottawa or New York.