Meer Akselrod

Biography

In 1930 and 1931 Meer Akselrod twice travelled to the agricultural commune Voyo Novo in the Crimea. It had been given an Esperanto name and was founded by Jews who had returned from Palestine. The observations and sketches he brought back are thought to have strongly influenced all his later work; the series “In the Steppe” was later built from them.

He was born on 18 July 1902 (5 July, Old Style) in Molodechno, in Vilna Governorate, and attended a heder, a traditional Jewish primary school. According to some accounts, before the First World War he studied at Yehuda Pen’s school-studio in Vitebsk, but the artist’s daughter does not confirm this. At the start of the war his family, like other Jews in the frontline zone, was expelled on the authorities’ orders and ended up in Tambov. In 1916–1917 Akselrod attended evening classes there at Vladimir Perelman’s drawing school. In 1919 the family tried to return home, but Molodechno was by then in Poland, and they settled in Minsk. He earned a living making advertising posters for cinemas, finished the Realschule (a secondary school with a practical curriculum), and in 1919–1920 served as a draughtsman in the Signals Directorate of the Red Army’s Western Front. In Smolensk he attended the art studio of the Proletkult, the Soviet proletarian cultural organisation, run by Vladimir Shtranikh, and he taught drawing in Minsk schools. In 1921 he took part in an exhibition of Belarusian artists in Minsk; according to some accounts, he showed 25 works there, and they were well received.

From 1921 to 1927 he studied at Vkhutemas, the state art and technical school in Moscow. He then taught at Vkhutein, the successor institute to Vkhutemas, and at the Textile Institute (1928–1932). He belonged to The Four Arts, and in 1932 he joined the Moscow Union of Artists. He designed productions for Jewish theatres in Minsk, Moscow and Kyiv.

From 1931 Akselrod was among the artists caught up in the campaign against “formalism”, the official Soviet attack on modernist tendencies in art. Newspapers reproached him for pessimism, sketchiness, distortion, unfinished surfaces, Expressionism and even a resemblance to Modigliani, although as late as 1934 his paintings were shown in France. He had to move into book illustration and the theatre, where he worked for the Belarusian State Jewish Theatre (GOSET), and at times for the Moscow one. He illustrated books by Izi Kharik and Samuil Halkin, the fairy tale “The Silver Snuffbox” by Zmitrok Biadulia, and “At the Crossroads” by Yakub Kolas.

In 1941 his family was evacuated to Tambov. Akselrod himself stayed in Moscow: he was trying to learn the fate of his arrested brother, the poet Zelik Akselrod, and was waiting to be called up. His brother was shot in 1941, at the age of thirty-seven.

Soon after his mobilisation Akselrod was recalled by Sergei Eisenstein to the film crew of “Ivan the Terrible” in Alma-Ata. On the way he collected his family from Tambov. He lived in Alma-Ata in 1941–1943 and helped Jewish refugees from Poland. His solo exhibition took place there in 1944. Most of the works in the cycle “German Occupation” were made in 1942–1943; among them is the painting “The Prisoner”, which, according to exhibition descriptions, is the only portrait of Alexander Pechersky, the leader of the Sobibor uprising, made in his lifetime.

It was Zelik who introduced him to his wife, the writer Rivka Rubina. His daughter, the poet Elena Akselrod, and his grandson, the artist Mikhail Yakhilevich, often appear in his paintings, as does his brother. Among his other themes are “Memories of Old Minsk” and the late series “Ghetto” (1968–1969).

In 1966, about 250 of his paintings were shown at a group exhibition on Kuznetsky Most in Moscow, and after it the artist was taken to hospital. In 1968 a solo exhibition was held in Rostov-on-Don. He never saw its catalogue. He died on 10 January 1970 in Moscow and is buried in the Jewish section of the Vostryakovo Cemetery.

Posthumous solo exhibitions were held in Moscow (1972, 1982) and Leningrad (1973), and later in New York, London, Germany and Israel. His daughter published an album-monograph in Jerusalem (1993) and, in Moscow, a book of memoirs and letters, “The Courtyard on Barrikadnaya” (2008). The poet Arseny Tarkovsky called his example a fine one: an honest and pure man achieves much “with truly saintly stubbornness”. I think these words say more about him than any art-historical formula. His works are held in the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum and the Pushkin Museum.