On the Jewish fields of the Ukraina

Issachar Ryback, 1897–1935

On the Jewish Fields of the Ukraina

Paris, 1926

A sculptor and painter, Issachar Ber Ryback was active in the Jewish avant-garde movement in Ukraine of the 1910s to 30s. He was born in Elisavetgrad but moved to Kyiv in 1911 to study at the art academy under the direction of Aleksandra Ekster. In 1917, he joined the Kyiv Kultur-lige’s art school as a drawing teacher. 

In 1926, Ryback spent two months in the collectives of the new American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation (known as Jewish Agro-Joint) in the Kherson and Crimea regions, documenting the daily life and work of Jewish settlers. “I felt the desire to speak to that new description of the Jew—the person who goes singing into the field and who has forsaken and forgotten his shop,” wrote Ryback in the introduction to his book. 

Ryback initially took photographs of the Jewish workers on the farms, which he later turned into the color and black-and-white drawings that blended modernism and realism. He celebrated the beauty, joy, and dynamism of the interaction with nature, emphasizing the muscular energy of the laborers’ bodies. The book was published in Paris, during Ryback’s stay in the city. 

This image features the title page on the right side, and on the left, a drawing of a harvesting scene on a sunny, late summer day. A stout, middle-aged Jewish man is enjoying freshly baked bread while still holding a rake, the tool of his labor, in his right hand. Other laborers are busy with harvesting the hay and leading horse-drawn wagons to the collection  point on the farm.