Kaplan, Anatolii [Tankhum] L´vovich (1902 - 1980), artist.
Mayer, Rudolf, compiler.
Strodt, Lia, compiler.
Far Scholem. Ein Jüdische Bilderbogen Anatoli L. Kaplan. Das grafische Werk. Die Lithografien und Radierungen zusammengestelt von Rudolf Mayer und Lia Strodt. Leipzig, Museum der bildenden Künste, 28.1-26.3, 1989. 83 p., b/w, color and half-tone ill., plates, bibliography. €35,00
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4 to, original covers. A RARE IMPORTANT CATALOG OF LEIPZIG EXHIBITION. VERY GOOD. A long inscription in clear hand by the previous owner (Leipzig, 13.12.1998)

Exhibition catalogue of Anatoli (Tankhum) Lvovich Kaplan, a Russian-Jewish painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose works often reflect his Jewish origins. A valuable detailed data on Kaplan´s works, including works for book publications and albums in former GDR. An important addition to a two volume Russian Museum, St.Petersbufg catalog (1995).

A must for a serious collector or institution of Kaplan´s lithographs and drawings. Kaplan´s works were, and still are, widely faked in St.Petersburg, Russia, Germany and America by a well organized net of art fakers.

'Kaplan one was one of six children; his father was a butcher in Rahachow which was at that time within the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia. His background was therefore not dissimilar to that of Marc Chagall, born a generation earlier in 1887, and although their lives were very different, their art has much in common. The shtetl figures in many of Kaplan's paintings - autobiographical references are very clear in The Butcher's Shop (1972) and Tailor's Shops (1975) and in the many illustrations which he was to create to the works of Sholem Aleichem.

Around 1922 Kaplan came to Leningrad (then named Petrograd), where he was to base his career for the rest of his life, although he often revisited the towns of his childhood. He graduated in 1927 from the Russian Academy of Arts there.

In the 1930s he became associated with a group of artists and lithographers in Leningrad which had been instructed to prepare a series of works dedicated to the remote Jewish Autonomous Oblast, being created by Joseph Stalin in the hope of resettling Russia's Jewish population in a remote area in the Far East of the country. Here Kaplan learnt and took to the skills of printmaking, developing many individual techniques. His first cycle of prints (1937–1940) was entitled Kasrilevka, (the name of the village invented by Sholem Aleichem).

At one time Kaplan was supervisor of design in a glassware factory and this gave him an interest in the third dimension which was later to blossom in his ceramics and sculptures.

From the 1950s onwards Kaplan's artworks concentrated on Jewish themes, despite constant and often serious opposition and obstruction from the Soviet cultural authorities. Amongst these works should be mentioned his cover and illustrations to the Jewish Folksongs of Dmitri Shostakovich (1977), illustrations to Shalom Aleichem's Tevye the Milkman (3 series, 1957–1966), The Enchanted Tailor (1954–57) and Song of Songs (1962), and a magnificent series of coloured lithographs (printed in London in 1961) on the old Jewish Passover song Chad Gadya (One Kid Goat).

Throughout this time Kaplan was also producing paintings though in view of their subject matter they were rarely displayed in the Russia of his time. From 1967 onward he began also to produce ceramics and sculptures, including a remarkable set based on the characters of Gogol's Dead Souls.'- ADAPTED FROM WIKIPEDIA.