Creating the images of mining workers and of old Russian towns, Ladoga, Pskov and Nizhnii Tagil, Lembersky approached subjects forbidden in his day: themes of faith and religion, Christianity, Judaism, the Holocaust, and totalitarianism. He documented the extraordinary violence that had accompanied much of the twentieth century, most of which he had witnessed first hand–the First World War, the Revolution, the Civil War, pogroms, the Ukrainian famine, the Siege of Leningrad, and the murder of his parents in Nazi massacres. His works spoke of the rebirth and memory that remains in still objects.

Lembersky described his paintings as consisting of two layers: the first layer is its recognizable subject matter, such as a landscape, a pot-plant or a large human figure without scale; the second layer is its hidden images-symbols woven into the structures of the first layer. (Avgust Lanin, “Interview with Avgust Lanin” 1999) These images suggest a human presence and the presence of God among the still commonplace objects and they repopulate otherwise desolate pictorial space. They suggest persisting life and spiritualism—a hopeful testimony to the century of violence.

The path that Felix Lembersky took toward non-realistic, non-conformist painting is unique because he approached it from the perspective of Socialist Realism. Having radically changed the form of his paintings toward a non-realistic modality, he did so in search of the most precise pictorial language for the expression of his time and the life of the greatest social majority – the common working people of his country.

Biography

In his early years Lembersky worked as a theater stage designer in the town of Berdichev in Western Ukraine (1927) and in Kiev (1927-1933). He studied painting in Kiev at Kulturlig (1927-1930) and then at the Kiev Art Institute (1933-1935). Through his work and studies in the Ukraine he became acquainted with the leading figures of Jewish culture and the artists of the Soviet Avant-Guard: Solomon Michoels, Alexander Tyshler, Vasily Grossman, Vladimir Tatlin, and Mikhail Boichuk. In the Kiev Art Institute, Lembersky studied at the studio of Pavel Volokidin, an artist and well-regarded art teacher. In Kiev, Lembersky’s artwork was published in cultural journals including Globus (Proletarskaia Pravda). During his visit to Kiev, Isaak Brodsky, the president of the Leningrad Academy of Arts (Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, LIZhSA) saw Lembersky’s work, recognized his talent and invited him to study at the Academy. (“Felix Lembersky Autobiography” 1960)

Felix Lembersky studied at the Leningrad Academy of Arts from 1935 until 1941. During that time, the foremost realist artists, both professors and students, gathered there; together they created the new Soviet art. Lembersky’s professors were Boris Ioganson, Aleksandr Osmerkin, Nikolai Punin, A.E. Karev, M.D. Bernshtein, and others. Many individuals who studied at the Academy with Lembersky later became influential figures of the official soviet art: Yuri Neprintsev, Aleksandr Laktionov, Andrey Milnikov, Evsey Moiseenko, and others. Teachers and colleagues valued the artistic talent of Felix Lembersky and Ioganson considered him one of the most outstanding students at his studio (Lembersky, 1941). Lembersky received achievement awards and graduated with high honors for academic excellence.

Lembersky defended his thesis in besieged Leningrad during the war in 1941; his topic was the industrial worker in the Urals at the turn of the twentieth century. That student thesis defense and the exhibition of work by Lembersky and other graduates became part of Russia’s war history and are considered some of the most significant events during the Siege of Leningrad. Literatura I Iskusstvo, which was Russia’s leading source of art news, compared the defense with the performance of the Seventh Symphony by Dmitrii Shostakovich (1942);  in the following years many authors wrote about the courage of young artists who countered destruction with art.

In 1942 the Road of Life, the path across the Ladoga Lake, from Leningrad to the mainland was established and Lembersky was evacuated to the Urals where he lived until 1944. He worked at the plants and mines of Sverdlovsk and Nizhnii Tagil, creating images of the workers in the military defense industry. In Nizhnii Tagil he founded the Union for the Artists, an art gallery (now the Nizhnii Tagil Museum of Fine Arts), and a school for beginning artists, which was the first in Tagil during the Soviet years. Lembersky’s work as an organizer created the foundation for artistic life that is still enjoyed by the Tagil community until this day.

The circle of Lembersky’s friends in the Urals included well-known members of the Russian cultural elite: fairy-tale writer Pavel Bazhov, writer Marietta Shaginian, composer Dmitrii Shostakovich, conductor Natan Rakhlin, actress Nadezhda Komarovskaia, writer Aleksei Novikov-Priboi, and many others.  Lembersky’s portraits of them are now part of museum collections across Russia. At the same, Lembersky befriended the workers and miners and spent most of his time with them at the Urals industrial plants. He thought of the workers as innate artists; this insight led Lembersky both in his teaching work and in his art. He  would often repeat his conversation with a worker at Voskov industrial plant in Sestroretsk during one of his art exhibits: “It is important that you show our life and our workshop,” the worker said, “the way we don’t see it ourselves. If you portray it the same way we see it, then why do we need your artwork? Our eyes would be enough”  (Lembersky, 1956 or 1957) This theme of the working people permeates all of his work from the charcoal drawings done in wartime to the thematic paintings of his transitional years in the 1950s and the semi-abstract paintings from the 1960s where Lembersky transforms the miners and their tools of trade into symbols of life and faith in the parched empty landscape.

In 1944 Lembersky returned to Leningrad when Boris Ioganson invited him to continue with post-graduate work at the Leningrad Academy of Arts. But Lembersky left his studies after a few months to work independently. One possible reason for his departure was the increasingly constrictive atmosphere at the Academy and the work required of its residents— large-scale paintings detailing political assemblies painted by collaborative groups of young artists. In 1944 Lembersky joined the Leningrad Organization of the Artists Union (LOSSKh) and also worked as a theater stage artist in the New Theater. At the end of 1944, Lembersky married Ludmila (Lucia) Keiserman. Lembersky created several portraits of his wife, in which he expressed his love and gratitude for her being part of his life and art.

After the war, Lembersky participated in exhibitions in Leningrad and Moscow and created many thematic compositions including Decant, Order Before the Battle, Julius Fuchik trilogy (Nikolai Dashkevich and Nikolai Brandt), Lenin, Zhdanov and Kirov with Children trilogy (on permanent exposition at the Annichkov Palace, 1955-1993), At the Industrial Plant, Execution: Babii Yar, Miners, Railway Pointer, and others. His works were bought for the museum collections of Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, Tagil and other cities in Russia and beyond. Articles about his work regularly appeared in the press: “Real and serious perception of the subject, courage, and the mark of original and strong individuality—this is Felix Lembersky”  wrote Marietta Shaginian (1944, p.  ). By the end of the 1940s, Lembersky taught at Tavricheskii Art College (later Serov Art College) and gave lessons at his studio. Artist Marc Klionsky (interview, 1998) remembered that Lembersky was so well regarded that his students gathered groups of other young artists to disseminate the ideas of the master to a wider audience.

In the mid 1950s, Lembersky began to paint over his earlier works that he had created as official commissions because he was dissatisfied with his former work and began to look for new means of expression. He destroyed many portraits and compositional studies and he almost entirely stopped doing commissioned work. His art continued to develop toward simplicity and flattened pictorial space; it also began to include non-realistic elements, such as bright colors and abstracted images and symbols.

During the1960s, Lembersky and his friend sculptor Mikhail Vayman organized a joint retrospective exhibition of their art. Lembersky exhibited new experimental paintings that he had completed during the previous three years in Nizhnii Tagil, Pskov and Leningrad. The exhibition was housed in the main hall of the Artists Union. According to the stenographic record of the public discussion of that exhibit, the visitors praised Lembersky’s experiment and welcomed the change toward the free, spontaneous and uninhibited art form.

(Lembersky) is a courageous and determined artist with an uncommon creative temperament…(Every) one of his watercolors, no matter how swift or small, is a complete and expressive work of art,” Brodskii, 1960).

I believe that the young must use Lembersky as an example. Lembersky felt that the previous method he had used did not reach the power and intensity required from a big artist and he began to ... change [his art] for the better. I am delighted by this and, even more than that—I am astounded by this change. I thank this master for courageously reinventing himself in the search for new art. I appeal to the young: if the young hope to truly grow in art and reflect Soviet life, then they have to take their example from Lembersky and act the same way,”  (Mogilevskii, 1960).

The exhibition of paintings by Felix Lembersky marked a shift in the art in Leningrad away from the academic photographic realism toward a new era of color and expressive painting. At the same time, the exhibition was one of few expositions of new art, which were officially organized by the Artists Union. Soon repressions of “formalism” returned and ended the public exposure to alternative art.

In 1963, Lembersky closed his studio to all but a few close friends and those who shared his vision: artists Aleksey Komarov, Solomon Gershov, Mikhail Natarevich, Mikhail Vayman, Iosif Zisman, Arsenii Semenov, Osipov, Avgust and Natalia Lanina, Mikhail Raikhil, and Ivan Godlevskii.  Many of these artists worked well into the 1980s and 1990s and they developed the ideas that emerged from their interaction with Lembersky during the early 1960s.

During the mid- to late-1960s, Lembersky painted in Staraia Ladoga and continued the theme of working people including Miners and Railway Pointer, the painting series consisting of oil paintings, watercolors, ink drawings, and a large sequence of mixed media. He also created the compositional paintings “Reclinging woman. Siege of Leningrad,” “Ficus Potplant,” “Midday. Crucifixion,” “Refugees,” “Holiday,” and “At Construction site,” which he approached in the same way as his earlier thematic paintings on the Socialist themes, as “Revolution 1917” – developing the compositions from specific realistic images toward the typical and abstracted. In these paintings, abstracted images-symbols of the common folk converge with landscapes and the images from the Old and New Testament and these paintings draw parallels between the twentieth century and the Biblical time.

Lembersky died in 1970 leaving his art collection to his wife Lucia Lemberskaia. Many of his paintings are located in the museums in St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, Nizhnii Tagil, and in Norton Dodge collection at Zimmerli Art Museum. Much of his later work is in private collections in the US, Russia and Israel.

Bibliography:
 “Exhibition of the Tagil artists’ works.” Tagil Worker. Nizhnii Tagil, Russia, no. 98  (9 May 1943).
 “Tagil artists at work.” Tagil Worker. Nizhnii Tagil, Russia no. 217 (13 September 1942).
Babel, Isaac. 1920 Diary. Edited by Carol J. Avins. Translated by H. T. Willetts. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990.
Beresark, I.  Exhibition of Tagil artists. Tagil Worker. (Nizhnii Tagil, Russia), no. 112 (20 May 1943).
Bird, Alan. A History of Russian Painting. Oxford: Phaidon Press Limited, 1987.
Brodersen, Arvid. The soviet worker: Labor and government in Soviet society. Studies in Labor, ed. Henry David. New York: Random House, 1966.
Conquest, Robert, ed. Industrial Workers in the U.S.S.R.  The contemporary Soviet Union Series: Institutions and Policies. New York: Praeger, 1967.
Distergeft, M. V.  Memoir. Nizhnii Tagil, Russia, December 1998- January 1999. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Ehrenburg, Ilya and Vasily Grossman, ed. The Black Book: The Ruthless Murder of Jews by German-Fascist Invaders Throughout the Temporarily Occupied Regions of the Soviet Union and in the Death Camps of Poland During the War of 1941-1945. Translated by John Glad and James S. Levine. New York: Holocaust Library; Distributed by Schocken Books 1980.
Garrard, John and Garrard, Carol. The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman. New York: Free Press, 1996.
Grachev, Michael. “Interview with Michael Grachev.” Interview by Yurii Blushtein. (St. Petersburg, 1999.) (Lembersky’s archives).
Ilina, Elena and Larissa Smirnikh. “Felix Lembersky and the Tagil period in his art.” Manuscript, 1999.
Keiserman, Lucia E. (Mrs. Lemberskaia). My husband: Artist F. S. Lembersky. Transcript. Ann Arbor, MI, 1985-1994. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Klionskii, Mark. “Interview with Mark Klionskii.” Interview by Yelena Lembersky. New York, 1998. (Lembersky’s archives).
Kraichik, B. Z. Man: Felix Lembersky. Transcript. [Leningrad, 1965-1975]. (Lembersky’s Archives). Mimeographed.
Lanin, Avgust. “Interview with Avgust Lanin.” Interviews by Iurii Blushtein and Galina Lembersky, tape recording. St. Petersburg, 1999. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Lebedev, Aleksei Aleksandrovich. Master’s Thesis. [Sverdlovsk, Russia.  n.d.]. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Lembersky F. S. “Working Schedule of Fine Art School Post-Graduate Student Lembersky.” [Leningrad: All-Russian Academy of Arts, 1944]. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Lembersky F. S., “The apparent reason is that you have power and make decisions” Speech manuscript. [Leningrad] [1955-1963]). (Lembersky’s Archives).
Lembersky, F. S. “It is difficult to talk about art.” Speech at the Meeting 18 April [1956-1957]. Leningrad. (Lembersky’s Archives). Mimeographed.
Lembersky, F. S. “Let’s organize a Union of Soviet Artists in Nizhnii Tagil.” Tagil Worker. Nizhnii Tagil, Russia, no. 176 (28 July 1942).
Lembersky, F. S. “Remark to Boris Ioganson.” Speech manuscript. [Leningrad] [1955-1963]. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Lembersky, F. S. “Soviet visual art.” Speech manuscript. [Leningrad, [1955-1963]. (Lembersky’s Archives). 
Lembersky, F. S. “The Week of Fine Art.” Speech manuscript.  [Leningrad]  [1955-1963]. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Lembersky, F. S. Autobiography. [Leningrad] [1961-64]. (Lembersky’s Archives). Mimeographed.
Lembersky, F. S. Letter to his wife, Lucia Lemberskaia. Nizhnii Tagil, Russia, 1958. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Lembersky, F.S. “Concrete proposals.” Speech manuscript. [Leningrad] [1955-1963]. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Lembersky, Felix.  (stenographic record of the speech at the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists, 1956 or 1957).
Lembersky, Felix. Thesis Defense at the School of Fine Arts, 2 December 1941. Leningrad: All-Russian State Academy of Fine Arts. (Lembersky’s Archives). Mimeographed.
Lembersky, Galina. Felix Lembersky. Transcript. [ Cambridge, MA, Ann Arbor, MI, 1990-1993] (Lembersky’s Archives).
Low, Alfred D. Soviet Jewry and Soviet Policy. [Boulder]: East European Monographs; distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1990.
Milner, John.  A Dictionary of Russian & Soviet Artists 1420-1970. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1993.
Raikhel, Zhanna M. Letter to Galina Lembersky. [Israel, 1999]. (Lembersky’s Archives).
Seventh Symphony. Literatura I Iskusstvo, April 4, 1942
Shaginian, Marietta. Ural v Oborone: Dvevnik Pisatelia. [The Urals Home Front]. 1944.
Sovetish Heimland (Moskva), Yiddish-language journal. (1969-1972).
Spector, Shmuel. The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews, 1941-1944. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, The Federation of Volhynian Jews, 1990.
Speranskii, A. V. V Gornie Ispytanii: Kul’tura Urala v Gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny, 1941-1945. [The Urals Culture during the years of Great Patriotic War]. Ekaterinburg: Rossiskaia Academiia Nauk, Uralskoe Otdelenie, Institut Istorii i Arkheologii, 1996.
Ushakov, Vasilii M. Memoir. Nizhnii Tagil, Russia, December 1998-January 1999. (Lembersky’s Archives).