Bronze figurative sculpture created by Mane Katz depicting a Jewish musician playing a double bass instrument atop a rectangular lower base.
Emmanuel Mané-Katz, born Mane Leyzerovich Kats (1894–1962), was a Litvak painter of the School of Paris, born in Kremenchuk, during the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine).
At the age of 19 Mané-Katz moved to Paris to study art. During the First World War he returned to Russia, at first working and exhibiting in Petrograd, following the October Revolution, he traveled back to Kremenchuk, where he taught art.
In 1921, due to the ongoing fighting in his hometown during the civil war, he moved once again to Paris. There he became friends with Pablo Picasso and other important artists, and was affiliated with the art movement known as the School of Paris, together with other outstanding Jewish artists of that milieu, that include Chaim Soutine, Isaac Frenkel Frenel, Amadeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall and others; he is sometimes considered to be part of a group referred to specifically as the Jewish School of Paris.
In 1931, Mané-Katz’s painting The Wailing Wall was awarded a gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair. Early on, his style was classical and somber, but his palette changed in later years to bright, primary colors, with an emphasis on Jewish themes. His oils feature Hassidic characters, rabbis, Jewish musicians, beggars, yeshiva students and scenes from the East European shtetl.
Mané-Katz made his first trip to Mandate Palestine in 1928, and thereafter visited the country annually. He said his actual home was Paris, but his spiritual home was Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.
Marked 8/12 and Signed on the side of the base of sculpture by the artist.
27.5cm Height x 17cm Width x 9 cm Depth
Great Condition
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