Oil on canvas. 730x600 mm; 28 3/4x23 3/4 inches. Signed in oil, upper left recto.
Provenance: Private collection, New York.
Mané-Katz (1894-1962) was a Litvak painter born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine. He moved to Paris in 1913 where he befriended fellow artists including Chaïm Soutine and Pablo Picasso, and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. He first traveled to Jerusalem in 1928, and while he moved often, he considered Israel his sacred home and died in Tel Aviv.
Jewish shtetl life was a common theme in his work. Mané-Katz often portrayed scenes of musicians, such as this Klezmer band scene, which depicts a typical performance in Eastern European villages before World War II and the Holocaust. Throughout his oeuvre Mané-Katz captured the richness and vibrance of Eastern European Jewish culture.
