Ethnographic art of Mendel Gorshman, a native of Barysaw
is one of the most interesting findings of our expedition. If you expand the images that are uploaded here in good quality, you can see how skillfully and very accurately the character and social context of Jewish dance are depicted. And most importantly, the author managed to portray in his sketches the plastic intonation of the lost today and little-studied Yiddish dance gesture. The drawings were made in 1926-28 in the Belarusian shtetls. There are also other works in the collection by the artist of about the same time. You can learn more about Mendel Gorshman here.
Shetlfest has obtained the rights to post digital copies of Gorshman’s artwork for the purposes of the project on their accounts. The originals are in the Astrakhan State Art Gallery named after P.M. Dogadin (Russia) and the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus.
