6: Painting, Abel Pann’s "The Day after the Pogrom: A Courtyard with Ruins and a Bereaved Family," 1903.

6: Painting, Abel Pann’s "The Day after the Pogrom: A Courtyard with Ruins and a Bereaved Family," 1903.

Bialik's 1903 Kishinev poems were not the only efforts by Jewish artists in Russia to say something urgent about the Kishinev pogrom through art. Here we have a 1903 painting about Kishinev by the then up-and-coming Russian Jewish painter Abel Pann (Pan); like Bialik's "In the City of Slaughter," it is set in the aftermath of the pogrom, with careful realist attention to the particular spaces where it took place. (Kishinev was a rapidly developing city at the time, and the events took place in a fairly run-down part of town). 

Suggested Activity: Compare Bialik's representation of the pogrom and its aftermath to Pann's; in particular, note how both artists place the family and family relations front and center, but with very different foci and effects. What can you observe about the figures in the painting? What details stand out in the background? Do you think this painting is supposed to be a realistic representation of the pogrom’s aftermath? Why or why not? 

Source: Abel Pann, Le-maheret ha-pra'ot: hatser bayit im harisot u-mishpahah yetumah [The Day after the Pogrom: A Courtyard with Ruins and a Bereaved Family], in The Art of Abel Pann: From Montparnasse to the Land of the Bible, ed. Yigal Zalmona (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2003).

Editor's note: We have not been able to make contact with the rights holder for the Abel Pann painting; we would appreciate hearing from anyone who can put us in touch with the rights holder.