Zvi Ribak

Zvi Ribak (

Early life

Ribak grew up in Radomyshl in a family of religious Jews. He lived a life of relative leisure until the age of 7 when a pogrom came to his town and killed 880 people. This was at the beginning of what came to be known as the white terror. After the pogroms his family relocated to Kiev, where Ribak, age 8, was already recognized to have extraordinary talent.^{[citation needed]} He was given permission to attend an art studio that housed artists such as Kipnis, Pinchuk, and Reznikov.

During the winter of 1919 Marc Chagall came to visit and took interest in young Ribak's paintings. He offered to take Ribak with him to Paris, but Ribak's father did not allow him to go. At the age of 14 he joined the Bubarikin studio. Ribak was told that he could have his livelihood assured as a painter if he would paint portraits of Soviet leaders. Ribak refused, saying that this would be worse than eating pork. So he decided to learn another profession to support himself.

Education

He applied to study architecture at the

In 1990 Jay Weinstein of Sotheby's edited a book called Zvi Ribak: A Jewish Artist Weinstein wrote of Ribak's paintings, "He did not paint the candelabrum, he painted the flame."[1]

References