So much of the Moshe Rynecki project is about piecing together the fragments. The pieces don’t always arrive in my life at the same time. There are scattered bits of data, photographs, and website links that I accumulate over time. I save all the documentation I find and I print out a lot of it, but really it’s about keeping track of it in my mind and trying to connect the dots for those a-ha moments. This morning I’m not really sure about all the pieces I have in front of me, but they seem important and connected, so I’m writing this blog to share them. My greatest hope with all these fragments is that at some point instead of thinking the fragments are connected, that I might actually find a way to join them together. So the pieces I have are as follows…
Item #1: In December I had several Warsaw Yiddish Daily articles translated. Two of the articles were published in July 1929 in a newspaper called the Unzer Ekspres. The articles talk about an exhibition of drawings and graphics at the Jewish Art Society Building (51 Krulevska [St.]) and they list my great-grandfather as having works in the exhibition. The first was published 15 July 1929 and the second was printed 25 July 1929.
Item #2: Yesterday I discovered that the Polish auction house, Polski Dom Aukcyjny has a catalog on their website that is titled Salon 1929. In the catalog it lists two of my great-grandfather’s paintings:
RYNECKI MAURYCY, Warszawa.
272. Przy chorym, ol.
273. Modlitwa, rys.
The catalog does contain some photographs, but no photos of my great-grandfather’s pieces. I contacted the auction house and was told they have the original catalog and that all the photos that appeared in the catalog appear in their online posting of the catalog. In other words, they do NOT have photographs of the two Moshe Rynecki paintings that appeared in the exhibition. The cover page of the catalog says that the works were exhibited at “Tow. Zachety Sztuk Pieknych,” which translates roughly to “the encouragement of fine arts.” Note that the titles given in the catalog translate roughly to “When Sick,” and “Prayer.”
Item #3: In the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is the Otto Schneid archive which contains correspondence, photos, and newspaper clippings sent from my great-grandfather to Schneid about his work. One of those newspaper clippings is a German article. I have transcribed the article and used Google Translate to better guesstimate what the article says. The clipping is undated, but it’s about an exhibition of Jewish artists. I’m not sure if it’s a German paper published in Poland or if it is about an exhibition in Germany. What makes me think of this article is that there is this photograph of a painting which is titled, “Modlitwa w Synagodze.” Perhaps it is the same Modlitwa, but with a slightly different title?
So the question is this: Is the exhibition mentioned in the Warsaw Yiddish newspapers the same one as is documented in the catalog held by the Polish auction house, and is this photo of the painting (whose whereabouts are unknown to me), all interconnected?
The quest for my great-grandfather’s lost paintings continues.