Between the muse and death
In memory of Yudel Pen
“Have you heard of Pen — my first teacher, the artist, the tireless worker who eternally resides on Gogolevskaya Street?” Marc Chagall would exclaim. The name of Yudel Pen is enveloped in both legends and glory, although the painter was remarkably modest, humble in his everyday life, and steadfastly refused all the advantages he could have gained from his unique talent. His thin figure, with glasses perched on his nose and a wedge-shaped beard, remains immortalised in self-portraits and in the memories of those he taught and inspired — not only Marc Chagall but also Ossip Zadkine, El Lissitzky, Ilya Chashnik, Oscar Meshchaninov, Zair Azgur, and many others. Yudel Pen, a chronicler of the shtetl [a Yiddish term for a small town with Jewish population], is regarded as the ‘father of the Jewish Renaissance’, for he nurtured a brilliant generation of artists who would flourish years later in the bohemian enclaves of Montparnasse and Soviet studios. He left behind a truly great legacy — without making a penny — as well as a bright memory tinged equally with love and tragedy.
Yudel Pen was born in 1854 in the town of Novoaleksandrovsk in Kovno Governorate. As he later wrote in his biography, “…that year cholera was expected, but God took pity on our little town and sent famine instead.” He chose his birthday — May 24th (June 5th in the new style) — for himself at the age of 27, when he needed to obtain a birth certificate. His father passed away early, and his mother struggled tirelessly to feed their ten children. The rare days when the orphaned household had enough to eat were considered fortunate. Yet, from a young age, the burgeoning passion for drawing never left the boy, even in the depths of poverty.
Pen drew while studying in the cheder; he received reprimands for his artistic pursuits and sometimes was even beaten, as the Torah forbade the depiction of living beings and allowed drawing plants only. Therefore, both his rabbi and mother were generous with their punishments. Nevertheless, Pen persevered, sketching portraits of his classmates and teacher. Observing the shifts of emotion on people’s faces and capturing them on paper — what could be more fascinating?
At the age of 13, Yudel packed up and moved to Dvinsk [now Daugavpils, Latvia] — a larger and wealthier city. Pen became an apprentice to a painter who specialised in shop sign drawing and had heard from acquaintances about the boy passionate about drawing. It is from him that Pen received the first guidance and first money for the ‘artistic’ work. Wishing to play a small prank while simultaneously decorating the hall of a client’s home, the budding artist added non-existent railings to a wooden staircase. He portrayed them in such a lifelike manner that the owner was unable to determine at first glance that the railings were fake. Impressed by the young man’s talent, the painter not only refrained from punishing Yudel but also paid him his first genuine fee — 25 roubles, which was an astonishing sum by the boy’s standards. Upon receiving this, Pen made the most significant decision of his life — he needed to study, properly. In 1879, he set off for St Petersburg.
At the Imperial Academy of Arts, his teachers were the renowned master of historical and portrait painting, Pavel Chistyakov, and sculptor Nikolai Laveretsky. Among his contemporaries were Valentin Serov, Ilya Repin, and Mikhail Vrubel...
After completing his studies, Pen encountered an arts patron in the face of Baron Nikolai Korf — a well-known publicist and social activist concerned about educational issues in the Russian Empire. The artist spent several years at Korf’s estate in Kreitzburg, situated between Dvina and Vitebsk. Contrary to expectations, he did not return to St Petersburg but settled in Vitebsk. Governor General Levashov, a friend of the baron, invited Pen three times to establish an art school in the city. The artist declined the offer twice, but on the third occasion, Korf persuaded him to accept the offer. In Vitebsk, which ultimately became the artist’s home for the rest of his life, Pen was warmly welcomed and given a room in the governor’s house. He later acquired a flat combined with an art studio, where he opened his school.
The ‘classes’ of Yudel Pen became a harbour for many future prominent artists. Having suffered from hunger and poverty in his childhood, Pen did not demand fees from the children of the poor; their education was funded by a local arts patron. Pen took care of his pupils as best he could. “When we studied with him — six boys — he treated us as his most beloved sons,” recalled the Vitebsk artist, Piotr Yavich. “Pen was everything to us — our art, our school, and even our home. His endless openness, simplicity, and yet high culture were astonishing. Without asking whether we were hungry or not, Yuri Moiseevich [Pen] would brew tea for us, boil potatoes in their skins, and set out lump sugar, butter, and cottage cheese on the table.” Throughout his life, Pen remained deeply involved in the affairs and problems of his former trainees scattered around the world, offered assistance and financial support to those unable to continue their studies due to poverty. He remembered all too well how hard it had been for him and endeavoured to ease his students’ paths to their dreams.
On his canvases, the world of the Jewish shtetl came to life — the most impoverished, vulnerable, and unfortunate part of society. Two Сats. Portrait of Raisa Idelson, 1908
Tailors, bakers, glaziers, watchmakers, seamstresses, and soldiers that returned from war — they, the labourers, were separated from the wealthy and well-fed by an abyss that was virtually insurmountable. The artist came from the same background as many of his students, including famous Marc Chagall, whose memories of Pen are filled with pain and tenderness.
It was Pen whom Marc Chagall, beaming with hope, invited to teach at the newly established Vitebsk Folk Art School. After all, whom else could he trust to nurture young talents other than the very man who had once been his own teacher?
However, after Chagall’s departure from Vitebsk, Pen found himself at odds with the changing environment of the Art School and soon left its walls behind. He continued to gather a few students at his studio on Gogolevskaya Street and gave them lessons free of charge. In 1927, he was awarded a pension and the Honoured Jewish Artist title, which allowed him to make ends meet.
For the rest of his life, Pen remained single. He had parted ways with his first love — the daughter of the Hasidic painter he was once apprenticed to, simultaneously relinquishing any dreams of a happy and prosperous life. The other love, unrequited and unattainable, belonged to the daughter of the governor who had invited him to Vitebsk. The girl departed for Paris in 1905 since the future looked bleak... Pen was no match for her. Yet, he forever remained loyal to the city and its streets where his beloved once walked. In 1924, he completed another self-portrait, depicting the muse gently caressing the strings of a harp, juxtaposed with death playing the flute — two opposing forces, with the aging artist caught between, counting the hours and days of earthly existence.
Student to teacher
Marc Chagall said about Yudel Pen’s creative work in this way, “You do not need to walk around the city or pay attention to people; there is no need to go to the theatre, to the church, to the synagogue — you have everything in front of you as everything moans and cries in Pen’s paintings every minute, both in the daytime and in the evening, on Saturday, on a holiday...” Chagall confessed, “I cannot describe Pen’s paintings. I heard, smelled, and touched Pen’s paintings as a child. I do not see them from afar. That is why I am a bad critic, and thank God.”
“Throughout my life, despite the diversity of our art, I remember his trembling figure,” Marc Chagall fondly reflected on his teacher Yudel Pen. “He lives in my memory like a father. Often, when I think of the desolate streets of the city, I feel his presence here and there… And I cannot help but ask you to remember his name.”
Chronicler of a Jewish town
Since 1927, Yudel Pen was granted a pension and awarded the Honoured Jewish Artist title. The justification read, “Artist Pen is a singer of the old, already dying Jewish way of life. Dozens of his works are incomparably far from October, from a house of a Belarusian peasant. However, this is — albeit an old one — a brick of cultural heritage that is laid collectively by the entire population of Byelorussia: Byelorussians, Jews, Poles, and Russians. Therefore, they are dear to workers and peasants.”
