Religious themes: Moses
03 July 2013
Courtesy Ephraim Margolin, California, USAIn his work, Lejzerowicz returns again and again to religious themes, such as in this dynamic painting, now lost, that probably depicts Moses breaking the tablets of the law after coming down from Mt. Sinai and finding the Hebrew people worshipping a golden calf. (See Exodus 32.) Since the reproduction of this painting does not include a title, I am surmising that this is the work mentioned by Oskar Rosenfeld, one of the ghetto chroniclers and an exceptionally cultured man, at home with literature and the arts as well as history. In discussing Lejzerowicz’s paintings - based on reproductions (perhaps the same photograph that is reproduced here), Rosenfeld notes: “Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law. A composition with baroque momentum, an attempt to find new ways to be liberated from the illustrative style (Doré, Abel Pann, and the German Nazarenes).”
Lejzerowicz did at least one other painting evoking Moses, this time a large work in cubist style. Of that painting, one sketch that the artist gave to his brother Szmul/Samuel in Berlin has survived.
Courtesy Ruth Lewis, formerly Ruth Leiserowitz, Maryland, USA