"Kinder–Velt" [Children's World], poems for children, by Boris (Ber) Smolar. Illustrations by Yisakhar Ber Rybak. Berlin: Schweln, [ca, early 1920s]. Yiddish.
Fine copy of the book "Kinder–Velt", comprising rhyming Yiddish poems, by the teacher, journalist and Yiddish author, Boris Smolar (1897–1986). The poems are accompanied by large illustrations of a superb quality, by Yisakhar Ber Rybak.

16 pages. Approx. 31.5 cm. Good condition. Minor stains. Minor marginal tears (few tears professionally restored). Rebound with string.

Yisakhar Ber Rybak (1897–1935), native of Elisavetgrad, Russia (today Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine), painter, graphic artist, and sculptor; one of the most prominent artists of the Russian–Jewish avant–garde. Studied at the Academy of Art in Kiev and in the studio of Aleksandra Ekster. In 1915–16, he was a member of the ethnographic expedition, headed by Shlomo An–ski, that aimed to document the culture of the Jewish communities of Podolia and Volhynia, and, working side–by–side with El Lissitzky, he produced copy–sketches of tombstones and monuments and documented the popular art he observed in the wooden synagogues of villages in the Pale of Settlement. For Rybak, this experience marked the beginnings of an enduring love affair with themes borrowed from popular Jewish tradition, and these themes and motifs provided the elemental foundations for his future work. He became one of the most active and outspoken artists of the "Kultur Lige" ("Culture League"), and taught drawing in the school that operated under the auspices of its art division. In 1921, he moved to Berlin, where he joined the "November Gruppe" and participated in joint exhibitions with other member artists. Rybak subsequently returned briefly to the Soviet Union and then moved to Paris, where he died in 1935.

Provenance: The Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv, B.2337.