USA: Seattle's De Hirsch Sinai, a Suburban-style Mountain, Cave and Tent for an Urban Congregation

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2016

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2016

USA: Seattle's De Hirsch Sinai, a Suburban-style Mountain, Cave and Tent for an Urban Congregation
by Samuel D. Gruber 

In the past few weeks I've visited two very different - and very important - mid-century modern synagogue "mountains": Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Temple de Hirsch Sinai in Seattle, for which B. Marcus Pritica was consulting architect. Wright's work is certainly more known than that Pritica's. In Seattle, I only walked past the Temple exterior, but I had a good look inside a few years ago. What follows is a discussion of that remarkable - but little known - mid-century synagogue  based on my 2016 visit. I'll follow up soon with an account of my top to bottom tour of Wright's Beth Sholom.

I recently wrote about some surviving former synagogue buildings in Seattle's' Yesler Way neighborhood. Not far away in, in the Capitol Hill Neighborhood stands the still extant and very active Temple De Hirsch Sinai, the city's largest synagogue, a Reform Temple founded in 1899 and today the largest Reform Congregation in the Pacific Northwest. The current sanctuary at 16th Avenue and Pike Street, adjacent to a 1920 buildings and continuous to the lot of the demolished 1908 sanctuary, was opened in 1960. At the time it was still a bold work of modernism in Seattle, and even today the structure is markedly different than most religious buildings. 

Two years ago, I wrote about the commemorative plaza built on the site of the congregation's 1908 building, which was demolished in 1993 after efforts to preserve it as a concert hall failed. By that time the new Temple DeHirsch sanctuary a mid-century modernist mountain, had already been standing for more than thirty years, dominating the other side of the same continuous synagogue property.

Paradoxically, preference for mid-century modernism was already on the wane when the congregation took down the 1908 structure. Increasingly, congregation were craving many of the older flourishes that that building had provided – smaller worship space, natural light, variation in wall texture and color, and visual stimulation. Taste change with every generation. The success for post-modernism in architecture and the nascent historic preservation movement shifted architectural focus in the 1990s. In Seattle the city was working hard to revive Pioneer Square, the oldest extant part of the city.

Now, thirty years later, tastes have changed again, and the mid-century modernism of De Hirsh Sinai is back in vogue – at least in part (I deciate this post to my colleagues on the Synagogue Moderne Facebook Group). Younger generations seem to like the style – in least in theory. But a smaller and more dispersed younger Jewish population is not affiliating with these mega-temples as they once were, so the future of most are jeopardy.  This is part due to demographics and location. Younger Jews are leaving the suburbs for the cities.
DeHirsch Sinai is something of an anomaly. Its design is entirely in keeping with the big mid-century Temples of the suburbs, but it is entirely urban in location. Not only that, it is urban in what may be the most popular re-location city in America. Though young people raised in Seattle may go elsewhere, there is a constant stream of newcomers, and some at least of these young tech titans are Jewish. Conventional wisdom has it that young single people do not affiliate much with synagogues, but they do when then marry have children. I don’t know what the trend is at DeHirsch Sinai, but when I toured the place with a young rabbi a few years ago, he seemed excited about the level of younger participation and the Temple had an active program of outreach based in the city, and also in their affiliated facility in Bellevue.

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Ceiling. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2016.

John Detlie (1908-2005) and Raymond Peck were the architects of record for the new Temple, and B. Marcus Pritica (1889-1971) was consulting architect. Given his long history as a thetaer designer, it is likely that Pritica gave the general concept, and the Detlie and Peck worked out the details. Pritica had designed a sparkling mosiac Ark for his first synagogue (Bikur Cholim) way back in 1914, and had specialized in theater design for decades. But Detlie had been a art director and set designer for MGM from 1937 to 1942 - so it is hard to know who designed the  monumental and dazzlingly theatrical Ark and other interior decoration.

Like many large synagogues of this period, the sanctuary looks best when ti is empty (totally awesome!) or entirely filled. A small crowd just makes the space loom larger, sucking the humanity out of religious worship. For this reason many congregations have added large chapels to their more monumental sanctuaries - in order to create more intimate spaces for small crowds and varied purposes. But the central location, the large enveloping tent-like space comes alive when filled. In the last year especially, the sanctuary became a place of community gathering, refuge, mourning and commemoration after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting last October, when the sanctuary and plaza outside were filled and the meaning of a synagogue as a Beit-haKnesset - a place of gathering - was fulfilled.

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai. Vigil on October 19, 2018, after shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh. Photo: Rich Smith.

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai. Vigil on October 19, 2018, after shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh. Photo: Alex Garland/CHS.

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai. Vigil on October 19, 2018, after shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh. Photo: KOMO.

The Temple was very much a building of its time. The architects were either inspired by or competing with (or both) Frank Lloyd Wright's Temple Beth Shalom in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, which opened in 1959. Wright's building has been called a new Mount Sinai (albeit in glass and plastic). Pritica, Detlie and Peck had to make a new mountain - and they succeeded with a design in which the new sanctuary looks a bit like Devil's Tower on the outside, but also surely recalls Mount Sinai - and perhaps those peaks of more close-by-Seattle mountains: Ranier and Baker. Unlike Wright's Temple, however, which is a mountain of light, Temple De Hirsch Sinai is a mountain on the outside, but something of a cave within. The only natural light is filtered through think stained glass windows at ground level. This experience is entirely insular. Once in the sanctuary the rest of the world does not exist. Wright through his use of glass and plastic created a light-filled, space, and Pritica, Detlie and Peck created a space apart this world, where attention in the sanctuary was entirely internalized. Wright had just died at age 94 when Beth Sholom was completed. Both Wright and Pritica had long successful careers - and Wright's achievement- and the praise it garnered - might have been especially meaningful to the 71-year-old Pritica.

Elkins Park, PA. Temple Beth Sholom. Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, 1953-1959. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019

Seattle, Washington. Mount Ranier seen from Smith tower. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2016

Prtiica seems to be given credit for the main design, but I do not know the details of the process. Prtiica had a long career in theater design and had built synagogues in Seattle as early as 1915. But Detlie also had an impressive career that included a stint as a Hollywood art director, so it is likely that the two joined forces on the interior design.

The building represented a clear break from the past when it was built and epitomized the architectural preferences of the late 1950s and 1960s, when big ahistorical, abstract, and/or symbolic forms were deemed most appropriate for new synagogue design. Large awesome spaces – often tent-like in form – took precedence of intimate and highly detailed spaces.

The structure in the Temple De Hirsch Sinai sanctuary brings to mind a the framework of a tent, with the skin wrapped around. The tent was a common motif at the time - recalling the Mishkhan in the the desert and the basic nomadic nature of Diaspora Judaism - something clearly evident in Seattle where Judaism had pushed to the final American frontier on the short of the Pacific Ocean. The Biblical tent could not be further from the historicist styles of Old- World Europe. Gavriel Rosenfeld and others have written that the popularity of modernism must have some roots in the trauma of the Holocaust, and this is certainly true, but I have also often maintained that the main trends of American synagogue modernism already have architectural roots in the Byzantine style, Art Deco, and proto-modernist designs of the inter-war period. As far as the interior structure of De Hrish Sinai, it may have been influence by the 1957 publication of Wooden Synagogues, or it might be part of the architectural Zeitgeist, since Seattle-based architect Pietro Belluschi uses similar forms in some of his churches and synagogues, perhaps most dramatically in Brith Kodeshin Rochester, New York, not complected until 1963.

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Ceiling. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2016.

Rochester, NY. Temple B'rith Kodesh. Pietro Belluschi, architect, 1963. Photo: Paul Rocheleau, 2020.

This was a period of delight in new technologies and cheap energy. Enclosed interiors depended almost entirely on artificial light, sound amplification through microphones and speaker systems, and substantial mechanical assistance for ventilation, heating and cooling. Natural light only filters in to the sanctum from the ground level, where a ring stained glass windows and decorative metal grates carry the superstructure. The idea may come from Erich Mendelsohn's Park Synagogue in Cleveland dedicated in 1953, but the effect is quite different, because in Cleveland the view is clear, and the great dome seems to float on light. In Seattle, the openings are busy, and function more as decorative base or border.

These screens should also be considered in relation to the articulation of the Ark wall, where a large screen surrounds a monument wall in the shape of the Tables of the Commandments against which the Ark itself is place. By 1960 such decorative screens were becoming increasingly common in large sanctuaries as a way to stitch together the lower and higher parts of the space - uniting as it were -e earth and heaven. There is a long architectural history of these types of screens in ritual spaces that will have to wait for another time. Suffice it to say we find screens and grilles in ancient synagogues, as well as those from the Ghetto period - but at least in the latter case - as in Amsterdam or Venice - the screens were designed to separate men and women.

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Ceiling. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2016.

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Ceiling. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2016.

Seattle, Washington. Temple De Hirsch Sinai, 16th Avenue and Pike Street. Ceiling. Detlie and Peck, architects; B. Marcus Pritica, consulting architect, 1960. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2016.

Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. Sanctuary, ark wall. Percival Goodman, architect, 1948.

Cleveland, Ohio. Park Synagogue, sanctuary. Erich Mendelsohn, architect, 1953. Photo: Paul Rocheleau, 2002.

Cleveland, Ohio. Park Synagogue, sanctuary. Erich Mendelsohn, architect, 1953. Photo: Paul Rocheleau, 2002.

Baltimore, Maryland. Oheb Shalom. Walter Gropius and Sheldon Leavitt, architects, 1960. Photo: Sussman-Oches in Kampf, Contemporary Synagogue Art, p. 36

Thanks to Rabbi Aaron Meyer and Librarian Toby Harris for showing me around Temple De Hirsch Sinai back in December 2016. I look forward to a return visit.

In a New Century Repurposed Seattle Synagogues Still Standing Tall

Seattle, WA. Former Bikur Cholim Synagogue, 17th Avenue and Yesler Way, 1912-1915, B. Marcus Pritica, architect. Now Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Herzl Congregation, 20th Avenue and East Spruce Street, 1925.  Now Seattle Classical Christian School. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Sephardic Bikur Holim, 20th Avenue and East Fir Street, 1924. Now Tolliver Temple (church). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

In a New Century Repurposed Seattle Synagogues Still Standing Tall
by Samuel D. Gruber

On a recent visit to Seattle I walked in the neighborhood between Yesler Way and Cherry Street, once the heart of the city's Jewish neighborhood. Like many American cities of the early 20th century the Jewish population was not big enough to define an entire neighborhood, but Jews were part of a vibrant ethnic and racial mix of "Jews, Scandinavians, African Americans and Asians. no one census tract in the  area ever had more than 41 percent of Jewish residents." (Family of Strangers, 138-139). This type of population mi, coming on the heels of World War I, was essential to the Americanization process of Jewish immigrants - and many other groups - though African Americans and Asians were provided substantially fewer opportunities due to systemic racism.

Historian Deborah Dash Moore has written "Jews were too small a part of most cities' populations to do more than set the tone through the establishment of organizations and businesses and by the presence of religious and cultural activities...Jews could dominate blocks but never whole neighborhoods." (Moore, "The Construction of Community," 107) This was also the case in my own city of Syracuse, New York, where the "Jewish" 15th Ward was really during the interwar period a richly diverse community of other European immigrant groups and some African Americans.

At least three former synagogue buildings, including one more than a century old and an early work of B. Marcus Pritica, one of America's leading Jewish architects, still stand and all have been effectively repurposed. None of the buildings or associated signage announce their Jewish history, but all still bear visible traces of their earlier Jewish identity.

Former Bikur Cholim (1915) 

Bikur Cholim Synagogue at 17th Street and Yesler Way was for decades the anchor of the Jewish Community. it was designed by Scottish-born Jewish architect B. Marcus Pritica (1889 – 1971) who was brought in mid-construction to re-design a failed project. Pritica studied architecture and began his profession in Glasgow, but came to Seattle as a young man, where he soon met theater impresario Alexander Pantages under whose patronage he would become one of America's most esteemed and prolific theater architects.

Seattle, WA. Bikur Cholim Synagogue, 17th Avenue and Yesler Way, 1912-1915, B. Marcus Pritica, architect. Now Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Bikur Cholim, 17th Avenue and Yesler Way, 1912-1915, B. Marcus Pritica, architect. The Ten Commandants and a inscription over the door have been removed, but the tablets and plaque remain. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Bikur Cholim, 17th Avenue and Yesler Way, 1912-1915, B. Marcus Pritica, architect. A Jewish Star was formerly in the roundel. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Bikur Cholim, 17th Avenue and Yesler Way, 1912-1915, B. Marcus Pritica, architect. Rich and varied tile decoration. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Bikur Cholim, 17th Avenue and Yesler Way, 1912-1915, B. Marcus Pritica, architect. Rich and varied tile decoration. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

As Eugene Normand has shown, Pritica's design for Bikur Cholim owes much to the recently completed Touro Synagogue in New Orleans designed by another Jewish architect - Eugene Weil (b. 1878) but it also fits neatly into the trajectory of his theater design.Touro Synagogue was begun in 1907 and the completed building was published in American Architect and Building News in 1909. It was also illustrated on picture postcards which appear to have circulated widely. I also think that Weil - and in turn, Pritica - were probably inspired by the recently completed and entirely unprecedented domed Temple Rodef Sholom in Pittsburgh, designed by Henry Hornbostel. The central dome is an consistent feature, but so too, is the decorative tilework. 

 The compact domed structure, with Romanesque, Classical, and contemporary - almost jazzy - decoration picks up on Central European synagogue design trends of the early 20th-century when center-dome buildings like that of Sofia, Bulgaria, became more common. Because of publications, the gap between Europe and America was narrow. Touro Synagogue was completed in 1909. The synagogue in Trencin, Slovakia is from 1913, and Seattle's Bikur Cholim was completed in 1915. After the Colombian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, domed structures were all the rage in America for a wide range of building types and formed a major component of "American Renaissance" design. Weil's and Pritica's synagogues offered a new model that was not based on classical prototypes, and architecturally expressed power and weight more than soaring idealism.

Pittsburgh, PA. Temple Rodef Sholom. Henry Hornbostel, architect, 1904. Photo:Paul Rocheleau, 2002.

New Orleans, Louisiana. Touro Synaoggue. Eugene Weil. architect, 1907-1909. Postcard.

New Orleans, Louisiana. Touro Synaoggue. Eugene Weil. architect, 1907-1909. Photo: Bill Aron, Detail (from Shalom Y'All).

Pittsburgh, PA. Temple Rodef Sholom. Henry Hornbostel, architect, 1904. Photo: Samuel Gruber, 2014.

As Pritica was working on Bikur Cholim, he also designed the now-destroyed Jewish Settlement House Education Center, (1914-16). Much later he engaged modernism in synagogue designs of the 1950s and 1960s - which I will address in a later post. In 1969 Bikur Cholim moved to the Seward Park neighborhood and a merger created Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath in 1971. The new building was designed by congregant I. Mervin Gorasht.  The Yesler Way building is now the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center, and Gorasht also designed the adaptive reuse of the historic structure. 

In 1906, Congregation Herzl was founded as an Orthodox and Zionist synagogue, by a group of members from Chevra Bikur Cholim. They began to build a synagogue at Sixteenth Avenue and East Fir street in 1909, but it appears they never fully complete the building due to financial and other problems. They gave it another go in 1923 under the leadership of their new rabbi, Baruch Shapiro, and in 1925 they moved into their completed synagogue at Twentieth Avenue and East Spruce Street. This survives today as the Seattle Classical Christian School. Today, the exterior is only slightly changed, but the interior has been almost entirely remodeled. Still, one can understand the original arrangement, which was a common one for Orthodox urban synagogue built in the 1920s. 

The monumental approach was up steps from the street and through three main doors. The site slopes to the east, and this allows most of the basement level - which would have had classrooms and social space - to enjoy large above ground windows. Overall, the design of the building is quite compact. There were not corner towers, but insides, stairways on either side led to the women’s galleries which wrapped around three sides of the sanctuary. This articulation is still clearly visible from the outside, and inside the big arched windows of the women’s gallery light classrooms and offices. The sanctuary itself has been divided into two full stories, with a floor run across the space linking the side balcony levels.

In 1929, Congregation Herzl become a Conservative synagogue. The congregation dwindled in the post-war years as the neighborhood changed, and the building was sold in 1969. Congregation Herzl and Congregation Ner Tamid merged in 1970 to form Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation. In 1968, land on Mercer Island was purchased. A new building  at 3700 E Mercer Way designed by architect James Chiarelli was  dedicated in 1971.

Seattle, WA. Former Herzl Congregation, 20th Avenue and East Spruce Street, 1925.  Now Seattle Classical Christian School. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Herzl Congregation, 20th Avenue and East Spruce Street, 1925.  Now Seattle Classical Christian School. This an another Jewish Star are the only clear indications of the earlier history of the building. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Herzl Congregation, 20th Avenue and East Spruce Street, 1925.  These big windows lit the women's gallery. It is not known if there were stained glass windows - but quite likely there were none. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Herzl Congregation, 20th Avenue and East Spruce Street, 1925.  This is a new floor across the sanctuary space. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019

Former Sephardic Bikur Cholim, now Tolliver Temple (church)

A third surviving synagogue in the area is the former Sephardic Bikur Cholim, built in a modest Romanesque style and completed in 1928, at the SW corner of Twentieth Avenue and East Fir Street. The congregation was founded in 1916 by Sephardi Jews from Rhodes, but it was not until they recruited Haham Abraham Maimon from Tekirday in Turkey, that they grew in size and organization, and were able to built a purpose-built home. The entire Jewish community - Sephardi and Ashkenazi - came together to raise the money for the new synagogue which was completed in 1929. No doubt, if the congregation waited another year or two, this would have been impossible. Haham Maimon died in 1931, but he was soon succeeded by his son the multi-lingual and multi-talented Solomon Maimon, who led the congregation for decades.

The synagogue was sold in the early 1960s when the congregation decided to moved south to Seward Park, where a new building was designed and erected by B. Marcus Pritica - still active in Seattle, and engaged with the Jewish community.  The former synagogue is now a church - the Tolliver Temple.Though the east facade faces Twentieth Street, the entrance is from East Fir so that the Ark wall is left free. The exterior suggests that after entering one would turn left to enter the sanctuary. Most likely the two-story articulation to the right of the entrance at the western end of the building was for office and classroom space.

There is still some decoration from the synagogue on the exterior, where a Decalogue without inscription remains above the main door, and Jewish stars are intact on the wooden entrance doors and above some windows. Photos from the recent past supplied by Julian Preisler show that not long ago the Tablets were legible and there also an inscription over the door, but these have now been covered over. This is a very much a transitional building. The decoration is historicist, but the size, massing, and plan could easily belong to a modest starkly modern brick synagogue of the box-type that would become common in the 1940s and 1950s.

Seattle, WA. Former Sephardic Bikur Holim, 20th Avenue and East Fir Street, 1924. Now Tolliver Temple (church). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Sephardic Bikur Holim, 20th Avenue and East Fir Street, 1924. Now Tolliver Temple (church). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Sephardic Bikur Holim, 20th Avenue and East Fir Street, 1924. Now Tolliver Temple (church). Photo courtesy of Julian Preisler, n.d. 

Seattle, WA. Former Sephardic Bikur Holim, 20th Avenue and East Fir Street, 1924. Now Tolliver Temple (church). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Sephardic Bikur Holim, 20th Avenue and East Fir Street, 1924. Now Tolliver Temple (church). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Sephardic Bikur Holim, 20th Avenue and East Fir Street, 1924. Now Tolliver Temple (church). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Seattle, WA. Former Sephardic Bikur Holim, 20th Avenue and East Fir Street, 1924. Now Tolliver Temple (church). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

For Further Reading: 

Buttnick, Meta. “Congregation Bikur Holim-Machzikay Hadath of Seattle: The Beginning Years,” Western States Jewish History 22/2 

Buttnick, Meta. “Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation of Seattle: The Beginning Years, Part 1,” Western States Jewish History 25/3. 

Buttnick, Meta. “Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation of Seattle: The Beginning Years, Part 2,” Western States Jewish History 25/4. 

Cone, Molly, Droker, Howard, and Williams, Jacqueline, Family of Strangers: Building a Jewish Community in Washington State (Seattle: Washington State Jewish Historical Society and University of Washington Press, 2003). 

Moore, Deborah Dash, "The Construction of Community; Jewish Migration and Ethnicity in the United States," in The Jews of North America, ed. Moses Rischin, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987). 

Normand, Eugene, 2013. "A Tale of Two Cities' Jewish Architects: Emile Weil of New Orleans and B. Marcus Priteca of Seattle," Southern Jewish History 16 (2013), pp. 1-41. 

Sutermeister, Miriam, 1994. "B. Marcus Pritica," in Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects, ed. J.K. Ochsner. Univ. of Washington Press, Seattle, 180-185. 

Tarrach, Dean A. . Alexander Pantages: The Seattle Pantages and his Vaudeville Circuit, (Seattle: University of Washington, 1972.

Remembering Pinchus Krémègne (28 July 1890 – 5 April 1981)

Pinchus Krémègne

Portrait of Pinchus Krémègne by Amedeo Modgliani, 1916. Kunstmeseum, Berne.

Pinchus Krémègne. Self-portrait.

Remembering Pinchus Krémègne (28 July 1890 – 5 April 1981)
by Samuel D. Gruber

Today is the anniversary of the death of Lithuania-born Jewish artist Pinchus Krémègne, an important member of the so-called School of Paris, and a close friend and associate of Chaim Soutine. Though less well-known today than his friends and rivals Soutine, Chagall, Kikoine, Modigliani (who painted his portrait) and others, Krémègne was long-lived and produced an impressive body of work. Most of his paintings are landscapes, townscapes, portraits and nudes - he shied away from social and political painting, and from controversial and conceptual work, and we do not know of any overtly "Jewish" themes in his work - though there may be some lesser known works or in work he did in Israel in the early 1950s. Much of the latter part of his life was spent in Ceret, France, where he created many of his powerfully expressive - and messy - landscapes. Like his colleague Soutine, he loved the materiality of paint.

Pinchus Krémègne. Provence Landscape, circa 1916

Pincus Kremegne, Les Capucins a Céret.

Pincus Kremegne, Landscape.

This bio is from http://www.ecoledeparis.org/artiste/pinchus_kremegne:

"Pinchus Krémègne was the youngest child in a family of nine. His family was religious and humble, and originally came from the Vilnius region. His father produced objects inspired by Slav folklore. When he was nineteen, Pinchus enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in Vilnius, where he studied sculpture and met Soutine and Kikoïne.

Aware that he did not have a future in Russia, where there was much anti-Semitic persecution at the time, he left for Paris in 1912, arriving after a difficult clandestine departure at La Ruche, “this great Russian hive of activity in Passage Dantzig.” Soutine followed his advice and met him there in 1913. In 1914, Krémègne sculpted and exhibited three artworks at the Salon des Indépendants. In 1915, he gave up sculpture and turned to painting.

In Paris, he discovered the museums and galleries that exhibited works by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne and the Impressionists.

Pincus Kremegne, Portrait of a Woman ,c1925

Pincus Kremegne. Standing Nude, 1934

From 1916, he spent time in Montparnasse, where he met Kikoïne, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Max Jacob. The art dealers Chéron, Zborowski and Paul Guillaume were his first collectors. In 1918, he discovered Céret, which inspired him, and he often stayed there. From 1920, Krémègne started to travel a lot; he went to Corsica (1923), Cagnes-sur-Mer (1928-1929), and Scandinavia, from where he brought many portraits. In 1923, he married Birgit Strömback with whom he later had a son.

In 1940, he took refuge in Turenne in the Corrèze in the Massif Central. He stayed at the house of a villager and helped to work in the fields. A gallery in Toulouse provided him with colors, which enabled him to continue to paint.

Following the Liberation, he returned to Paris and settled in a studio in rue François-Guibert. From 1949 to 1956, he traveled to Israel. However, it was in Cérét that he found the most inspiration. During the 1960s, Krémègne bought a plot in Cérét where he built his “studio-house” and he lived there until he died in 1981."

Pincus Kremegne. Portrait of unknown seated woman.

Pincus Kremegne. Still Life with Bread.