Red Profile

Art critics found Max Band’s paintings sombre. The French critic N. Frank wrote: ‘It was in cosmopolitan Paris that Max Band became even more Jewish. His characteristic feature is sadness. Even his flowers bloom sadly. The rain of sadness sprinkles his works, his landscapes, his portraits’ (1939, Review, 24:7). Having mastered the sfumato painting technique (from Italian fumo for ‘fog’, sfumato for ‘disappearing’), whereby colours and tones are so subtly combined that it is difficult to distinguish where one colour or tone changes into another, Band created a particularly melancholic and lyrical mood. Litvak melancholy persisted in the work of artists during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The landscape Evening Closes by Augustinas Savickas, and works by Adomas Jacovskis, became symbols of sadness.

Text author Vilma Gradinskaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album STORIES OF LITVAK ART (2023). Compiler and author Vilma Gradinskaitė
© LATGA, Vilnius 2024

Art critics found Max Band’s paintings sombre. The French critic N. Frank wrote: ‘It was in cosmopolitan Paris that Max Band became even more Jewish. His characteristic feature is sadness. Even his flowers bloom sadly. The rain of sadness sprinkles his works, his landscapes, his portraits’ (1939, Review, 24:7). Having mastered the sfumato painting technique (from Italian fumo for ‘fog’, sfumato for ‘disappearing’), whereby colours and tones are so subtly combined that it is difficult to distinguish where one colour or tone changes into another, Band created a particularly melancholic and lyrical mood. Litvak melancholy persisted in the work of artists during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The landscape Evening Closes by Augustinas Savickas, and works by Adomas Jacovskis, became symbols of sadness.

Text author Vilma Gradinskaitė

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album STORIES OF LITVAK ART (2023). Compiler and author Vilma Gradinskaitė
© LATGA, Vilnius 2024