Included in the Otto Schneid archive at the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library are several newspaper clippings with information about some exhibitions that included Moshe Rynecki’s work.  This article, written in German, was particularly difficult to read because of the use of the font, Fraktur.  I eventually was able to transcribe the text which I then put through Google Translate.  The results (included in this blog post down a bit further) are not brilliant, but they give you a sense of the content of the article.  I am hoping that someone who speaks German might take a look at this and help me refine the translation.

I find a few things about this article compelling and eye opening.  The first is that my great-grandfather was so prominently featured in this newspaper (whose title I do not know).  The second is that all four of his paintings included in this article have titles, which lends quite a bit of history and insight to my great-grandfather’s way of thinking about his paintings. [Read more…]

2013 was marked by many great milestones and successes for the Moshe Rynecki project. A brief listing of this year’s finds:

(1) In early June a Fulbright scholar in Warsaw tracked down 2 images I’d never seen before. These images were printed in Nasz Prezglad – a Polish Zionist daily published in Warsaw in the interwar years.

(2) In late June I received photographs of 7 Moshe Rynecki paintings held by a woman in Israel. She is the aunt of the man I visited in Canada, whose parents were partisan fighters and who bought a bundle of my great-grandfather’s paintings after the war.

(3) In October I learned about the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and the Otto Schneid archive. In that archive were letters written by my great-grandfather that I’d never seen before and 13 black and white photos (and newspaper clippings) of paintings that were all new to me. I now hope to be able to track down those canvases…

(4) In November the Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH) in Warsaw emailed me photographs of 17 of the 52 Moshe Rynecki paintings held in their collection.

In case you’re counting, that’s a discovery of thirty-nine (39!) images of my great-grandfather’s work that were all new to me in 2013! Wow. It’s been quite a year.

Thank you for following (and helping!) me as I continue on my quest to find and learn more about my great-grandfather’s body of work. I can’t promise what 2014 will bring, but I do have tentative plans to travel to Warsaw in the fall, and that should prove to be an interesting journey.

My work on the Moshe Rynecki project has moved forward because of all the help I receive from so very many different people. Sometimes that help arrives in the form of serendipitous information, other times people have offered useful advice and guidance. A few weeks ago I learned about the Historical Jewish Press website and the fact that they offer a digital collection of Jewish newspapers that is accessible to the public.  The papers in their archive include publications across several different countries, languages, and years. Not only have they digitized the papers making it possible to view many papers in their original layout, but they also digitized the content, making it possible to search the published text on any desired term. This effort, begun by Tel Aviv University and the Jewish National and University Library, is a phenomenal amount of work and an incredible resource.

I only had one problem, I can’t read Hebrew and I definitely don’t know how to read Yiddish. While I don’t read Polish either, I can usually stumble my way through a Polish publication trying to eyeball any mention of my great-grandfather’s name. That, sadly, is not possible for me in a publication whose letters I cannot read. Fortunately, the same gentleman who informed me that the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library had original resource information about my great-grandfather, also gave me the magical sequence of Hebrew letters to form the Yiddish version of my great-grandfather’s name, Rynetski [read right to left]: רינעצקי

Searching with this magical sequence of Hebrew letters turned up many different “hits” in the Historical Jewish Press website. It turns [Read more…]

On the 18th of November I received an email from the Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH) in Warsaw, Poland. The email contained photographs of 17 of the 52 Moshe Rynecki paintings held in their collection.I have been sharing those photos here on my blog for the last few weeks in individual posts.  Today I present all 17 images below.

So now, you may ask, where are photographs of the other 35 pieces held by ZIH?  As those of you who have been following for awhile know, over the years I have managed to find photographs of  34 of the works held by ZIH. I am, therefore, awaiting a photograph of just one more Moshe Rynecki painting held by the Jewish Historical Institute.

During my visit at the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, I “found” in the Otto Schneid archives a handwritten Yiddish letter that Moshe Rynecki wrote to Otto Schneid. While the mystery of WHAT the letter says has been solved, there are now new mysteries about the contents of the letter. I’m working on that, but welcome any assistance you may be able to offer.  Here is the original letter and the translation:

Answered on 28 Dec. [19]30

Otto Shneyd!

I am an artist, a painter, born in the year 1885 in the small Polish town of Shedlits. My name is Moyshe Rinetsky [Rynecki]. I now live in Warsaw at 24 Kradzhe [Krucza][Read more…]

A few weeks ago I received an email with 17 photographs of my great-grandfather’s paintings held by the Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH) in Warsaw.  The Institute has 52 of  Moshe Rynecki’s paintings under their control.  I am frequently asked how they came into possession of my great-grandfather’s works.  The answer is that I do not entirely know.  I know their records show they obtained many of his pieces in 1946, but that they also acquired others at different points in time.  I am including here a description of the Institute as explained on Wikipedia as well as a photograph of one of the pieces held by ZIH.

The Jewish Historical Institute was created in 1947 as a continuation of the Central Jewish Historical Commission, founded in 1944. The Jewish Historical Institute Association is the corporate body responsible for the building and the Institute’s [Read more…]

Today a few quotes that really speak to me:

Heritage is not just about sticks and stones. It’s about things making sense to people, part of the accumulated culture of their communities.
– John Yates (English Heritage’s Inspector for historic buildings in the West Midlands)

 

Art restitution is a painful exercise for everyone involved and required creative thinking by all parties and a willingness [Read more…]