The Polish-born artist Abraham Jaskiel (1894 Częstochowa – 1987 Haifa) lived in Leipzig from 1920 to 1933. In 1928, he married Leipzig resident Augusta Miriam Toepffer, who converted to Judaism in 1929. Jaskiel was active in Leipzig’s cultural scene as a painter, stage designer and theatre painter and was involved politically in the Marxist movement. Shortly after the National Socialists came to power, he first fled to Poland and then emigrated to Palestine. His wife and son Zeev, who was born in Leipzig in 1929, arrived in Palestine in 1933, enabling the family to build a new life in Haifa. The couple’s second son Amos was born in 1935. Both sons also work as artists.
Abraham Jaskiel’s oeuvre from the Leipzig years encompasses motifs of the city such as churches, streetscapes and park views. He identified with his new home, was well connected in society and was an established painter. He regularly took part in exhibitions, such as the Juryfreie Kunstausstellung. His painting Weißes Haus (ca. 1926), which has been in the MdbK since the 1930s, was presented in that exhibition in 1927. Jaskiel is a typical representative of the so-called Lost Generation: due to National Socialism, his artistic work initially came to an abrupt end and was afterwards significantly marked by his experience of exile. Today, knowledge of the artists of the Lost Generation is for the most part extremely limited. Jaskiel’s oeuvre from his Leipzig period is not very extensive, and these works are actually not available on the art market. This makes it all the more significant that the MdbK was able to acquire two further representative paintings by the artist through a purchase in 2023 and a donation in 2024. All three paintings will be presented in the context of other works from the collection in the "Picture Universe".
