Moshe rynecki biography

Moshe Rynecki (Polish: Mojżesz Rynecki, Yiddish: משה רינצקי Mosheh Rynetski; 1881–1943) was a.
Moshe Rynecki (1881-1943).
I am an artist, a painter, born in the year 1885 in the small Polish town of Shedlits.

•

The category of Jewish Art History cannot simply be subsumed into a generalized European art history. The modern artist as the author-agent of the work of art is a relatively new persona and figure for Jews, emerging only in the nineteenth century along with greater historical movements of emancipation for Jews in Europe. My great-grandfather, Moshe Rynecki (1881?-1943?) was split between affinities: on the one hand, he was a painter of traditional Jewish life in Poland, settling his gaze upon

scenes of synagogue, teaching, labor and leisure. In this, his paintings are an invaluable source of visual information about a world that has vanished. On the other hand, his self-portraits reveal a man apart from the world he depicted, a modern subject rendered in a minimalist style with expressionist lines in contemporary and not traditional dress. The tension between the ethnographic content of the painting and the modern gesture of the cosmopolitan painter is a fascinating one, a tension that plays itself out as Jews became modern citizens of European capital cities (one thinks of

•

Moshe Rynecki (1881–1943)

Moshe Rynecki was born in 1881 in a small town East of Warsaw near the town of Siedlce. His father, Abraham [Avraham Zvi], was a tailor who specialized in making uniforms. Little is known about his mother, Zipora. [Zipora is the name Moshe’s son, George, used for his mother in his memoir. In November 2013 we learned of a painting held by The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw that Moshe painted when his mother died. The Hebrew text on it reads: Frieda Rachel daughter of Ezekiel ARII. Died Saturday (of parashat) Kdoshim, 6 (day of month) Eiar, Year 5684 (1924), Siedlece. And she lived for 82 years. So perhaps Zipora was her nickname.] Life was hard for the Ryneckis. They had no running water and there were unsanitary conditions with a sewer ditch running along the road. As for their religious beliefs and practices, it had previously been written here that the Ryneckis were Hasidic. Then it was changed to read Orthodox. What we know for sure is that Moshe’s son, George, wrote a memoir in which he wrote about his grandfather’s fami

•

Cultural Events

Krasinski Park by Moshe Rynecki (1930) (Permission to use from Elizabeth Rynecki)

The secrets to the past unfold with gentle whispers guiding the way. How else can one describe the journey of Elizabeth Rynecki in her search for her great grandfather Moshe Rynecki’s illustrations of everyday Jewish life in Poland between the inter-war years and before the Holocaust.

From the earliest age, Moshe Rynecki was an artist using whatever materials he could find – chalk, paint – to tell the story of his community. Despite family concerns of being an artist and despite even the interpretation of the second commandment – thou shalt not create graven images, he continued and persisted. For a short while, he even attended the the Warsaw Academy of Art to study art.

Moshe married Perla Mittelsbach at a young age. Together they opened an art supply store in Warsaw, which Perla managed while Moshe went off to paint.

Moshe’s dedicated his life to document the vibrant diverse Jewish community in Poland, the largest community in Europe. As the inter-war year