Adler Jankiel Jakub
Jakub Jankiel Adler was a Jewish painter and graphic artist working in Warsaw, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Paris and London. He was born in 1895 in Tuszyn near Łódź, died in 1949 in Whitley Cottage near Aldbourne and was buried at Bushy Road jewish cemetery in London . He started his education in Belgrade in an engraver’s workshop. From 1916 he continued to learn at Gustav Wiethchter’s Kunstgewerbeschule in Barmen near Düsseldorf. Adler was a good friend of painter F. W. Seiwert who cooperated with the Berlin magazine "Die Aktion" which propagated a leftist ideological program and an avant-garde style. In 1918, while Adler lived in Warsaw, he established contact with a group of Jewish artists called “Jung Idysz” which was formed in Łódź. From 1917 Jakub Jankiel Adler created expressionistic paintings and painted compositions having ecstatic and mystic expressions. He undertook biblical-Talmudic themes and worked on themes taken from Jewish folklore (Baal Shem Tov’s Blessing, Baal Shem and Buddha, Last Hour of Rabbi Eleazar). He interpreted the processed motifs of Christian iconography as a symbolic expression of renewing Jewish tradition (Adoration, Resurrection, Three Maries). The style of his paintings is characterized by harsh collision of colors and bold deformations of space which are visible signs of influence of the art of Ludwig Meidner. The ecstatic character of expressed Jewish rites is intensified by a rough arrangement of forms which are crowded and accumulated in a vertical frame of the composition. Chasidic mysticism can be seen here in ghostly figures whose proportions are elongated similarly to the ones in El Greco’s works. Moreover, these contoured figures are dematerialized by flooding and slenderness of flat dots of color. Linocuts made by Adler have frames filled by fragmented forms which possess geometrical or smooth contours. These forms are entirely subjected to compositional rhythms of plane of drawings. The impression of broken and disintegrated shapes is intensified by a sharp contrast of diffused lights and shadows, collision of black and white dots which are often modeled with a “comb” (“The cellist”, “Ecstasy”).
Adler presented his works in 1919 in Polski Klub Artystyczny (Polish Artistic Club) at Hotel Polonia in Warsaw. One year later he moved to Berlin where he entered the circle of artists who were gathered around “Die Aktion” magazine. Adler became a member of Das Junge Rheinland after he had moved to Düsseldorf at the turn of 1921 and 1922. In 1922 he established, together with Henryk Hirszenberg, Ignacy Hirszfang and Natan Szpigel, an ephemeral group called Srebrny Wóz (Silver Cart). In the same year, Adler took part in the Great Art Exhibition in Berlin. The exhibition was organized by Novermbergruppe and presented avant-garde trends and tendencies. Adler also took part in the First International Exhibition of New Art and Progressive Artists’ Congress which accompanied the exhibition. Both events were organized in Düsseldorf by Das Junge Rheinland, Dresdner Sezession and Novembergruppe.
Adler abandoned at that time expressionistic style for cubism and constructivism. He started to create figural compositions but he did not resign from narrative motifs. As far as ideological meaning was concerned, he sought a synthesis of personal experiences, national identity and religious-ethnic values (My Parents, 1920-21). Following the esthetics of early cubism, Adler presented items simultaneously from different points of view. While creating still life, he inserted pieces of wallpapers with different patterns and newspaper clippings. He imitated the texture of wood, introduced letters, numbers and Jewish calligraphy into his compositions.
Adler created his works under the influence of synthetic cubism between 1924 and 1926. His characters were painted on a background where planes of different patterns and colors were crossing and superimposing each other. Adler experimented also with painting technique itself, mixing paints with sand, salt, wax, plaster and lime. Apart from oil paints, he used tempera as well. In his large figural compositions Adler showed a tendency to make items look like monuments and, what is more, he emphasized physiognomic features of models. Motifs which often recurred were episodes from lives of East European Jews.
Jakub Jankiel Adler created decorations on the walls of Astronomical Institute in Düsseldorf in 1926. He visited Majorca and Spain in 1929-1930. This trip had an influence on his artistic work, as he became to have tendencies to generalize different forms in an abstract way. His synthetic shapes were encircled with a distinctive contour and he used a rich relief texture. He painted exaggerated characters which had massive proportions and were presented in almost monochromatic way. These characters were a direct reference to Pablo Picasso’s paintings from the classical period. The significance of Adler’s art from the 1930s was related to the German ideology of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Adler worked in a studio owned by Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf in 1931. At that time he met Paul Klee. From then on, Adler’s painting evolved towards allusive abstraction (Surrealistic Compositions). The line of painting was no more purely descriptive, it became independent and dynamic. Moreover, the line was smooth and covered harmonic arrangements of colorful planes.
Adler settled in Paris in 1933. He came back to Poland in 1935-1936. A monographic exhibition of his works created after 1920 was organized in Warsaw in 1935. The artist moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1938. Two years later he joined the Polish army which was being formed in France at that time. After demobilization in Scotland in 1941, he moved to Kirkcudbright due to his health condition. In 1943 Adler settled in London. In the 1940s he returned to creating large figural paintings from the 1920s. His works had again meaningful gestures, refined poses and classification of characters. His works often assumed elliptic shape. When Adler was in England, he drew inspirations from arts of Naum Gabo and Kurt Schwitters. Other factors which had influence on his works were: linearity of fantastical compositions of Paul Klee, over-real poetics of landscapes of Max Ernst and monumental way of presenting characters in paintings of Pablo Picasso. The way Adler showed human figures in his paintings referred directly to classical styles and symbolized the tragic nature of human existence, joy and suffering of living. The artist presented shapes in an allusive way; his compositions consisted of superimposing colorful planes cut with a network of strong, dark contours. What is more, his luminous and deep colors assumed enamel gloss.
Works of Adler were presented in many individual exhibitions. Among them, there were those in: Łódź (1918), Warsaw (1920, 1935), Wrocław (1931), London (1946, 1948, 1951, 1954), New York (1948), Edinburgh (1954) and Wuppertal (1955). Apart from oil painting, Adler used also graphic techniques, drawings and watercolor.
Irena Kossowska
Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk (Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences) December 2001
