Chana Orloff

Abstract

Chana Orloff (1888–1968), a Ukrainian-born artist who emigrated to France in 1910 by way of Palestine, was one of the most important Jewish artists of the School of Paris and a pioneering woman in the early Israeli art world, yet her story has been marginalized in both the narratives of European modernism and the history of Israeli art. I propose that Orloff's biography and artistic production, particularly her sculpted portraits of Jewish friends and colleagues in Paris between the two World Wars, demonstrate how diaspora, gender, and displacement play a critical role in a revised narrative of twentieth-century modern art. I argue that Orloff's work offers a compelling visual counter-discourse to prevailing negative stereotypes of Jewish identity in European visual culture. During a time when many émigré artists wished to distance themselves from their Jewish identity in light of widespread anti-Semitic and xenophobic beliefs that their work contributed to the “decline” of French culture, Orloff proudly did just the opposite.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Ayelet Carmi for her support with research, translations from Hebrew and insightful commentary. I also wish to acknowledge Andrea Pappas and the anonymous peer reviewers for Modern Jewish Studies, along with the following colleagues for their critical response on this article at various stages: Ruth E. Iskin, Tirza True Latimer, Jennifer L. Shaw, Rachel Shreiber, Alla Effimova, Kim Anno, and Irene Cheng. I am grateful to Ariane Tamir of the Chana Orloff Association for providing images and documentation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

I am grateful to the University of San Francisco's Faculty Development Fund.

Notes

1 The literature on the artist is limited to several early monographs (Courières 1927; Werth 1927; Luzzatto 1933; Gamzu 1951; Talpir 1951), two catalogue raisonées (Coutard-Salmon et al. 1980; Marcilhac 1991), summary essays in museum exhibition catalogues (Cassou 1961; Gamzu 1969; Cogniat 1971; Kofler 1993), two unpublished dissertations (Coutard-Salmon 1976; Grossman 1998), and a limited number of scholarly articles (de Bastier 2009; Birnbaum 2012a, 2012b; Birnbaum and Novakov 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paula J. Birnbaum

Paula J. Birnbaum is Associate Professor of Art History and Academic Director of the Museum Studies Masters Program at the University of San Francisco. This essay is related to her forthcoming book project, Chana Orloff: A Modern Woman Sculptor of the School of Paris, Brandeis University Press.