Boris Schatz

Written By: Dr. Ruja Marinska

Boris Schatz (1866–1932) is the final subject of this first cycle of our course of lectures. We have spoken about Dimitar Dobrovich, a Bulgarian from Sliven, who spent almost all his life abroad, in Greece and Rome. Then we talked about the Czech, Ivan Mrkvička, who came to Bulgaria and stayed here for more than 40 years in order to take part in laying the foundations of post-Liberation artistic culture in the country. Today’s topic—Boris Schatz—continues along this line, but in a slightly different way. If we calculate precisely, we see that Boris Schatz remained among us Bulgarians for eight years—only eight out of his 65-year-long life. Not only we here, but altogether all experts on Schatz, acknowledge that those eight years were the most important, the most prolific, and of the highest quality in his entire work. The years spent in Bulgaria actually define him as a significant figure in Bulgarian art of the late 19th. century, standing at the dawning of Bulgarian sculpture.

Schatz is a very peculiar personality. He could also be the subject of a psychological analysis—romantic, energetic, ambitious, and—this is what we will speak of now—active in various fields and with a challenging personal and social life. He is looking at us in this portrait by Mrkvička, painted a year after Schatz had arrived in Bulgaria.

Schatz began on his path of life in Varniai, a small town in the Lithuanian Governorate of the former Russian Empire. This was a region where the purely Jewish traditions were as strong as the Russian culture was developed. In fact, the entire oeuvre of Schatz is shaped by the crossing of those two lines. At the age of fifteen, he arrived in Vilnius and remained there for five years, from 1882 to 1887. For two of them—from September 1883 to June 1885—he studied at the Vilnius Drawing School. Obviously, from an early age, he felt attracted to art, to fine art, something that, it should be noted, was quite unusual for a boy from a Jewish family. Jewish tradition did not encompass an appreciation of fine art, as such, and figurative art had no place in that tradition. However, Schatz wanted to become an artist, an artist of a European type at that, developing precisely in the sphere of fine arts. It was there, in Vilnius, that one of the most significant encounters in his life took place. Everyone’s fate, if you think about it, is traced through certain events, by contacts with certain people, through which the hand of fate directs a person in the course of life. So, in the summer of 1887, he met Mark Antokolsky (1843–1902), who was visiting his parents in Vilnius. Antokolsky came from the same region, the same Lithuanian Governorate of the Russian Empire, and by that time, he had already achieved world fame. I will show you a relief that Boris Schatz made of him after Antokolsky departed this life, in 1902.

Who is Mark Antokolsky? Russian experts claim that he is the only figure of historical importance in Russian sculpture of the time. But he is not only a purely Russian phenomenon. He developed as an artist in Russia, at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, and it was there that he created his significant works. He left Russia because his health required a more favourable, southern climate. Initially, he went to Rome, before settling in Paris in 1877, where he established a highly reputable studio and spent the major part of his life. Besides exhibiting in Paris, he carried out important commissions and was awarded top honours—the Order of the Legion of Honour, and a large gold medal, among others. Mark Antokolsky is a truly remarkable figure in nineteenth-century sculpture. Moreover, he was a Jew from the Lithuanian Governorate of the Russian Empire, as I have already mentioned.

The young Boris Schatz’s encounter with this great master was determinant for him. Later, Schatz recollected that he had shown Antokolsky a small figurine, which he had made for no significant reason, just like that! But Antokolsky liked it enough to engage with Schatz’s fate, advising him to further his studies, preferably in a centre such as Paris, where he himself had settled. This, however, was not to happen for some time.

Schatz stayed briefly in Warsaw, for just one year. We could easily gloss over this short stay (1888), although it was an interesting period because, there, Schatz was both student and teacher. He gave lessons in painting and sculpture in Jewish schools, which provided sustenance for him, thereby enabling him to master his craft. And so, at that time, he studied the techniques of relief, of miniature sculpture, and medal making.

However, we could also skip this, were it not for the publication in the local Jewish newspaper of his first article, in which he formulated his views on art. It is quite astonishing that this article already expressed Schatz’s standpoint, one that he actually followed and championed throughout his life, both as an artist and as an organiser of artistic education. There are two points of great significance. The first is that visual, fine art stands highest in the hierarchy of the arts. It is almost unbelievable for a young man of Jewish origin to be so convinced that fine art is the supreme art. He explains that this is so because, in fine art, reality, objective reality, manifests itself most fully. The second point, clearly emphasised in Schatz’s text, concerns the moral significance of art. Today, we can say that this motif is typical of the 19th. century, especially of its second half, given that those ideas were shared by quite a few artists of that time. However, for Schatz, those two lines were absolutely intertwined, and accompanied him throughout his life. Note that, coming from a Jewish family with weighty traditions, he always behaved with certain reservations regarding Orthodox Judaism and he always belonged to that line of the Jewish movement linked to the promotion of human values. This clearly stands out in the entire oeuvre of Boris Schatz. And here, in this, his first article, the 25-year-old artist formulated his views on art. I shall read two excerpts from it:

“Art raises the spirit of the people, it purifies them and protects them from the wrong path.

And another:

“Nationalist art is art which comes from the heart and works in harmony with the heart of the nation.”

And a final quote from Schatz, which he wrote a little later, in 1910, but which maps out his entire programme of creative work:

“I looked upon art as a temple and upon artists as its priests. I dreamed that I should become a high priest in the service of sacred art, that I would teach mankind the ideal of the great and beautiful.”

Today, it may seem either familiar or too full of pathos, but this was at the end of the 19th. century and written by a young artist embarking on the road of art.

In mid-1889, Schatz returned to Vilnius. He married Eugenia Zhirmunsky, better known in our country as Jennia, and together, at the recommendation of his professor, Mark Antokolsky, they arrived in Paris at the end of that year. The capital of art posed many challenges to the poor youth, but Schatz did not despair. He took up all kinds of jobs—he appeared in the ring both as a boxer and a wrestler, and he worked in a ceramics factory. But, most importantly, he never lost the guiding light. From 1890 to 1894, he worked at the studio of Mark Antokolsky.

By that time, Mark Antokolsky was truly crowned with glory. He had created his most remarkable works, among which I would like to bring to your attention the great doctrinal marble sculpture, Christ before the People’s Court. Note that an artist of Jewish origin had created an artwork on such a theme. It enjoyed a strong public resonance. As for Boris Schatz, he was more than a mere student of Antokolsky; he, naturally, absorbed everything that he could learn from him, and also became his assistant and adherent. Besides being a great sculptor, Antokolsky was also a thinker; he had created an entire credo. Some call this strand of his art “psychological retrospectivism”, because he had the idea of creating the images of great people, of figures of the past who were spiritually significant.

In addition to attending Antokolsky’s studio, Boris Schatz also worked at the private atelier of Fernand Cormon. Later, the painter Cormon was to become a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris as a professor, but at that time he was still working in his own studio. Schatz became Cormon’s student in his quest to fully master the required academic skills. Formed quite early in life, and really intelligent, Schatz did not maintain formal “teacher-student” relations with his preceptors, which may explain why Fernand Cormon himself, as Schatz recalled, recommended that he should leave Paris for some time and go to the South of France to be alone and to reflect on his inner self. Schatz followed this advice and, indeed, for six months, retreated to the south, on the border with Spain. It was a period of particular importance to him because it was then, in isolation, far from the big city with all its temptations and happenings, that the idea came to him that he needed to work on themes of Jewish history. In fact, it was there that he conceived the series of images from the life of Moses and, on his return to Paris, he began to fulfil this programme.

Unfortunately, the whereabouts of most of Schatz’s works, including some of his most significant examples, are unknown. We know them only from photographs—for example, this sculpture of Jochebed, Mother of Moses. To Schatz, Moses was not merely a national symbol, but also a universal ideal. All those who are familiar with the history of sculpture from the second half of the 19th. century can appreciate that Schatz followed that academic line, that he had absolutely mastered those lessons.

It was at this time that he also conceived the figure of Mattathias the Maccabee. Since we may not be very acquainted with this matter, please allow me to engage in a digression to remind us who the Maccabees were. The Maccabees, a name that could be translated in Bulgarian as “The Hammers”, were five brothers who, in the second century BCE, took the lead in the battle of the Jewish people against the Seleucids and against the Hellenisation of the Jewish race. Schatz chose to embody into a figure the fifth and last brother, Mattathias Maccabee. First, I will show you the study of the head of Maccabee. (By the way, Schatz later said that he used the image of his grandfather, a rabbi in the Vilnius Governorate, as the image of Maccabee.) Then, the figure itself was created. If I can judge from the published photographs, the sculpture is over a metre high. It is not made of zinc, as various books state, but an alloy of zinc and lead or tin. As you can see, Mattathias the Maccabee is depicted as a conqueror (because the Maccabees were the victors), with his foot pressing in triumph on the enemy. Yigal Zalmona, author of the only significant study of the life of Boris Schatz (Yigal Zalmona, Boris Schatz: The Father of Israeli Art, (Jerusalem, 2006)), writes that this figure is “an image of enraptured ecstatic fervour”.

The work was shown at the Salon de Paris, leading to the occurrence of some interesting events. It was precisely there that the sculpture was seen by the Bulgarian Prince, Ferdinand I—a patron of the arts and undoubtedly one of the most enlightened monarchs of his time. The year was 1895. Ferdinand invited Boris Schatz to come to Bulgaria. For a long time, this fact was somewhat concealed in our literature, and the preferred version was that Bulgarian students who were studying in Paris told Schatz about their native country, and for this reason he decided to travel to Bulgaria. I think these two versions are not mutually exclusive—indeed, they coordinate very well. There were Bulgarians in Cormon’s studio, so Schatz probably heard a lot about their country. Let me draw your attention to the fact that, in those days, many turned their backs on civilisation and went to seek the truth in distant lands; for example, Paul Gauguin, who went to Tahiti. I hope you don’t find such a comparison to be far-fetched (for we see ourselves as Europeans), but Bulgaria then was still an exotic, oriental country, an unploughed cultural field. This fact also probably played a role in Schatz’s decision.

So, at the end of 1895, he arrived in Sofia, accompanied by his wife Jennia and another artist, an old friend from his Paris days, or perhaps even from Vilnius—Esther Slepyan. (We have, at the Gallery for Foreign Art, a single work by this artist—It Passed Like a Dream.) In 1896, they opened a private school, where all three taught. This school was in fact more like a high school of art, catering for teenage students. The Bulgarian School of Drawing was not yet open; that was to happen some months later, in October. But for this most dynamic, energetic, active man, as Schatz undoubtedly was, the lessons he gave were clearly insufficient to occupy him; he immediately established contact with the artists in Sofia, especially those who had already founded the Society for Supporting the Arts in Bulgaria. He immersed himself in the local reality and began frantically to work.

In 1896, he received an assignment from Prince Ferdinand to design the eminent Coronation Album. (Another piece of information about Ferdinand not generally known but worth mentioning is that all foreign artists who were then invited to live and work in Bulgaria to lay the foundations of our post-Liberation culture, were personally supported by Ferdinand from his own lists, and not by the official state institutions.) That year, Emperor Nicholas II was to mount the Russian throne. Bulgaria’s relations with Russia were quite complicated and, naturally, the occasion of the crowning of the new emperor had to be used to improve them. So the artists decided to compile and present to Emperor Nicholas II, on 25th. May, 1896, the day of his accession to the throne, a grand coronation album from a Bulgaria grateful for its liberation. Schatz had only recently arrived in our country and had literally three months to complete this important assignment. Think about it—he had to become familiar with our local reality, with our typical life, and our local characters! The beginning of his first Bulgarian year was more than strenuous, but he managed brilliantly.

Regarding the Coronation Album, once again we can only judge from a reproduction published in the Izkustvo journal. (I was hoping to see Mr Hristozkov here tonight. I wanted to lure him to undertake certain démarches in order to track down this Coronation Album in Russia, because I don’t think it has been destroyed.) It was a huge metal body that weighed seven tons, executed in bronze and silver alloy, and 220 cm high—a gift truly worthy of an emperor. This part here, the album itself—because the other part is the pedestal—is about one metre high. It opened and contained the presented paintings. Those 20 or 30 paintings (sources differ regarding their number) were executed by the most representative, the greatest Bulgarian artists at the time—Mrkvička and Mitov, among others. The album was supported by two figures sculpted by Boris Schatz—typical figures of Bulgarians and, of course, peasants. Then, as for a long time, the rural character was perceived in Bulgarian art as representative of our country. These Bulgarian characters are depicted quite accurately. This here is the Bulgarian, and the kneeling figure is a Macedonian. In this scenario, there is an ideological subtext—Macedonia remained outside the Principality of Bulgaria. It is amazing how, in such a short time, Schatz could become acquainted with the distinctive features of Bulgarians, to observe them and succeed in depicting them. Another extremely interesting feature of this album is that the entire sculptural body was covered with ornaments derived from our manuscripts, from our artistic heritage. It also manifests Schatz’s penetration (a very quick one at that) of Bulgarian tradition. The sculpture was cast at the Barbedienne foundry, then one of the most renowned bronze casting foundries in Paris, and a quality benchmark in casting, fine modelling and patination of sculpture; a foundry with 120 years of history (1834–1954). It was only natural that, through Antokolsky and perhaps other connections, Schatz had contacts with the foundry. So, this Coronation Album, cast on 1st. May, 1896, was brought to Sofia and displayed in the large hall of the National Assembly for a few days, for those who wanted to see it. After that it was sent north, where it was presented as a gift to Nicholas II on the very day of his coronation.

In search of the typical Bulgarian character, Schatz created numerous models in terracotta. Recently, such works by Schatz were shown at two auctions in Sofia. I don’t know where they appeared from, but appear they did! And here you can see, on the one hand, a Bulgarian character—the moustache, fur cap, and a peasant garment. At the same time, take note of the expression on his face—such warmth, which undoubtedly speaks of Schatz’s fondness for the world he found himself in.

And here is the Macedonian. He is also a moustachioed man, but there is a slight difference in his costume, and he looks a little more sorrowful, perhaps. Bulgarian types (last time, in the lecture on Mrkvička, we talked at length about this) are a central theme in our post-Liberation art, also adopted by Schatz. With equal success (I can not tell you where he was better), he worked in sculpture in the round and relief sculpture, in both monumental and miniature forms.

Here’s a sculpted relief, Macedonian with an Axe. Schatz created many variations of that image. We have to appreciate the significance of these first Bulgarian sculpted images and to reflect on the fact that, in Bulgaria, there was yet no tradition of sculpture. It was something very sensual, very material, and therefore the Eastern Orthodox Church denied and prohibited it. Whereas, for painters, it was difficult to “leap” from the icon to the painting, for sculptors this “leap” was essentially from nothing to sculpture. And then, Boris Schatz appeared—he really was the first; there were no others. Moreover, he came with his highly elevated European, Parisian quality.

In the National Gallery’s collection, there is a lovely bronze work by Schatz, dated 1896—Whistling Boy; a superb image of a youngster, both as a typical character, and as a state or condition. Perhaps Schatz also created other similar works. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, they have not survived.

Here is another work by Schatz—Child. It is now lost, but fortunately, it was reproduced in the Izkustvo journal. It was probably the first representation of a baby in Bulgarian sculpture, soon to be followed by others, such as those of Andrey Nikolov and Pando Kiselinchev. I am showing it as a proof of the fact that Boris Schatz brought the European, Parisian school to Bulgaria, in its entire volume and its entire thematic range.

I found on some website that Schatz was a court sculptor of Ferdinand’s. He was not a court artist of Ferdinand, because Ferdinand didn’t have any! The fact that Schatz was a frequent visitor to the palace, that he had matters to discuss and communicate with Ferdinand—that is beyond dispute. Let me also remind you that Mark Antokolsky, his teacher, also portrayed the Russian imperial family.

In 1899, following the untimely death of Maria Louisa after the birth of her fourth child, Ferdinand commissioned a monumental portrait of the Princess, which we talked about last time. However, he did not assign the portrait solely to Ivan Mrkvička; he also commissioned Schatz to design a special sculptural frame to set off the impressive portrait. And so Schatz fulfilled the assignment. What you see on the screen is a restoration, which we made at the National Gallery in 1996 for the jubilee exhibition of Mrkvička. We allowed ourselves a small liberty—we replaced the missing marble hemispheres (only one remained, and it was used as an office paperweight) with bronze castings of the same form. This is the only difference from the original frame, which was a plastic artwork fully designed in its complexity. Allow me a musical association! There are three themes that Schatz composed around the Mrkvička portrait. The first—Angels and Holy Images, in other words, those who are mediators between this world and the hereafter. At the top, around the crown, two small seraphim are depicted. We can also see the text that is repeated several times on the frame, also cast in bronze: I, from Heaven, will always watch over you and Bulgaria. It is believed that those were the dying words of Princess Maria Louisa.

Here are the angels. You must agree with me—what high artistry! Indeed, it is difficult to say where Schatz was better—in sculpture in the round or in relief, which in itself is a very subtle matter.

Here is another image, which some colleagues call Angel. In fact, this is Saint Cecilia. Saint Cecilia, the patroness of music and art, whom Maria Luisa regarded as her own protector. These sorts of images are bearers of the theme that takes us to the hereafter, to the spiritual.

The second theme continuing what we have remarked about the Coronation Album, relates to the ornaments derived from the Bulgarian artistic heritage, from our tradition. All this is finely balanced and well synchronised in the frame of this portrait.

And the third theme—the Bulgarian characters, those local, earthbound ones! What’s more, it says here who is a Greek, who a Jew, who a Shoppe, who is such and such; in other words, the ethnic groups that inhabited the Principality of Bulgaria. After having been in Bulgaria for three or four years, Schatz had penetrated more extensively and deeper into this matter. These images, characteristic and bright, are also perfectly executed as relief sculptures.

It was 1899. We might think that, after such a successful start on Bulgarian soil, Schatz would have been showered with love and respect. Alas! Given the way we are, that was not to happen. Quite the contrary; attacks erupted, there was criticism in the press; simply put, everyone envied him. Finally, he was even removed from the list of professors of the Drawing School, something that seriously shook up his financial situation. Also at that time, the first academically educated Bulgarian sculptors returned to Bulgaria, namely Marin Vasilev (1867–1931) and Zheko Spiridonov (1867–1945). They were both from Shumen, and they both began to study first in the Czech Republic, then in Munich; after that, on their return to Bulgaria, they were appointed as teachers at the Drawing School. (This is only for your information.)

What is more, in 1899, that difficult year for Schatz, he also had other problems of a personal nature. You probably won’t be happy if I leave them out. His favourite and most talented student, Andrey Nikolov, began an affair with Schatz’s wife, Jennia. For Schatz, the suffering and insult were hard to swallow. The lovers fled together to Paris. Subsequently, it turned out that the affair was no more than an insignificant episode for Andrey Nikolov. But, despite the birth of their only daughter, Schatz’s marriage was compromised and, in 1903, ended in divorce. That daughter, Angelika Luba Meerson-Schatz, also an artist, maintained a tender relationship with her father over the years.

1899 was the final year in which Schatz was intensively connected with Bulgarian themes. During those four years of his stay, he laid the foundations of Bulgarian sculpture and created his most significant works.

The beginning of the 20th. century, however, marked a significant turning point in his artistic career and destiny. In 1900, Dr. Mordecai Ehrenpreis, a remarkable figure and a highly educated connoisseur of Schatz, became Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria. Prior to taking up this honorary post, he had been the secretary of Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) in Vienna. There may well be no need to explain who Theodor Herzl was: founder of the Zionist movement and author of the prominent book The Jewish State: Proposal of a Modern Solution for the Jewish Question. Schatz’s communication with Dr. Ehrenpreis influenced his works as he searched for Jewish motifs, events and characters from Jewish history. Again, this should be understood, not within limited, orthodox boundaries, but in the broad, humanistic, universal aspect.

In 1901, at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, Schatz had the opportunity of personally meeting Herzl. (Herzl, by the way, came to Bulgaria in 1896 and had an audience with Prince Ferdinand. The visit is documented and the reasons for it were quite clear—many Jews lived in Bulgaria. But, at that time, the paths of Schatz and Herzl did not cross. This was to happen later.) They held serious discussions, followed up in an interesting correspondence in which Schatz proposed the idea of establishing an art school in Palestine. In 1903, they met in Vienna. It was then that Schatz used the opportunity to portray the image of Herzl. (This relief here.) In the centre, we see Theodor Herzl in profile, and to the right is the image of Moses. Herzl himself then asked Schatz: “What name will you give to your school?” Schatz did not hesitate. “Bezalel”, he replied. Bezalel, because, in Jewish tradition, he was the first Jewish artist, who built the Tabernacle in the desert wilderness. A legendary figure of a creative artist. So the idea became reality.

I shall go back in time a little to show this image of the composer Rubinstein. It was made previously, while Schatz was still in Paris. He produced a series of interesting relief portraits—of Charcot, the celebrated neurologist; Rubinstein; Louis Pasteur; and Karl Marx—an entire series of celebrities.

Here is something related to the design of the monument to the Tsar Liberator. Schatz’s participation was noted with praise, but nothing more. He had already distanced himself from local problems. Still, this photograph of a fragment of his project has been preserved. As we know, the competition was won by the Italian sculptor, Arnoldo Zocchi (1862–1940).

During his last years in Bulgaria, Schatz portrayed a series of Jewish prophets, thinkers, and eminent figures of the Jewish community. He was already attuned to working in that direction.

Still, in 1904, he was awarded a final, major state assignment by Ferdinand—to be the commissioner (nowadays, we would say “curator”) of the Bulgarian exposition at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, USA. Devastated by everything that had happened to him, he left for America and remained there for ten months. What he contributed to the exhibition, we know only from one or two preserved photographs. But I think it would be interesting to mention an almost unknown fact. The only ray of sunshine that warmed Schatz’s soul at that time, was the feeling that had been ignited towards his cousin, a young, 16-year-old girl with whom, during those ten months, he kept up a correspondence—a very spiritual one—fortunately preserved in Schatz’s archives. You might be surprised, for that girl was the future great Bulgarian poetess, Dora Gabe (1888–1983). When Schatz returned from America, he made a diffident attempt to strengthen their relationship, but to no avail. He reconciled himself to the fact that he would remain her “old man from Palestine”, as he called himself, and he kept a treasured memory of her. When, in 1934, Bezalel, his son from his second marriage, organised an exhibition in Sofia, one member of the organising committee was the already famous Bulgarian poetess Dora Gabe who—and not just because of her Jewish origin—was part of that honourable body.

Schatz was in Berlin throughout 1905. After the death of Theodor Herzl, Berlin had become the seat of the Zionist movement. Schatz did not interrupt his work as a sculptor, but was mainly involved in organisational activities. There, Schatz found supporters for his idea of opening a school in Palestine and, finally, in October 1905, it was publicly announced in the press that, in Palestine, Jerusalem, the Bezalel Art School would be founded. Three of the enthusiasts—Schatz, the illustrator Ephraim Lilien (1874–1925) and Julius Rothschild—left for Palestine. At the beginning of January, they were already there, and two months later, had established this distinguished school, which celebrated its 100th. anniversary a few years ago with much stateliness and full respect for that deed of Schatz’s. Today, Jerusalem is completely different, but when Schatz and his followers arrived there, it was, as he himself wrote, a small, dirty, sleepy town where 5,000 Jews lived, somewhere on the periphery of the Ottoman Empire. Such was the strategic situation. But Schatz did not despair. In no time at all, he organised both the construction and the opening of the school. It is important to mention here that he implemented the experience he had gained in Bulgaria, at our Drawing School. But he also expanded upon it: along with the classes where pupils studied art, there were daytime and evening courses; he organised workshops where typical Jewish traditional crafts, such as carpet weaving, for example, were practised. Here, the practical streak in him is truly felt. Schatz’s view was that the school could be self-supporting—not entirely, perhaps, but supporting itself financially to a certain extent. A short while later, the foundations of the museum were laid. The Jewish Museum in Jerusalem, at present the largest in Israel, is based on the Schatz collection, which he had built, I would say, with full regard to his experience in Bulgaria.

The years that followed were quite severe for Palestine and the world. But Boris (now Baruch) Schatz remained firmly in his post. He continued to work intensely and actively for the Bezalel Art School—his favourite creation, the principal meaning of his life. He entered into another marriage. In Palestine, he married Olga Pevsner, a professor of art history and writer, who bore him two children—Zahara and Bezalel—both later involved in the sphere of art. This marriage also was not a happy one, but Olga remained with him until the end of his life. Schatz died in America, in Denver, Colorado, where he had gone again to seek financial support for the school. It really was the deed of his life. He was actually, ever since his youth, a man with a mission, with a sense of mission. And that is why he passed his whole life in this way—very active, extremely dedicated, combining the two lines that I mentioned at the beginning: on the one hand, visual art; and on the other, the moral ideals that for him were one.

This relief, The Shofar Blower, was made when he was in Palestine. He was working there, but, of course, his centre of gravity was focused more on the organisational activities for achieving the flourishing of the school. I chose to show you this relief only because, after all, our topic is Schatz in Bulgaria. A shofar is a musical instrument of ancient origin, typical of Jewish tradition, which is blown to announce the New Year, the end of Yom Kippur, and on other important occasions. This image-symbol is repeated many times in Schatz’s artworks.

His last self-portrait, executed shortly before his death, is a painting. You see the unfailing glow in his eyes. I mentioned that he studied painting and sculpture and worked in both fields. Schatz was a man truly dedicated to his work. He died on the operating table at a local hospital.

Despite all the embitterment he had suffered, Schatz still preserved a treasured memory of Bulgaria. He also believed that his Bulgarian period was very important in his work, and that is why his son Bezalel, himself an artist, decided to turn to the Bulgarian authorities and, in memory of his father, organised a posthumous exhibition in Bulgaria in 1934, donating several of the exhibits. They are now in the collection of the National Gallery. Of particular interest is a series of miniature reliefs with Jewish themes.

The exhibition had a great public response. Here is a photograph in which we see Andrey Nikolov, who played such a fateful role in the life of his teacher, with Schatz’s son, amid the exhibits of the exposition. Schatz himself, as evidenced by his personal archive, did not forgive his former pupil to the end. The same cannot be said of Andrey Nikolov. The episode with Jennia had been quickly forgotten, but his gratitude to his teacher remained. Thus, he turned out to be the most ardent organiser of the Boris Schatz exhibition in Sofia. In the State Archives, there are letters that were exchanged between Schatz’s son Bezalel and Andrey Nikolov, addressing each other as “dear friend”. They are very cordial. And, in the catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition, Andrey Nikolov wrote a fine appreciation, from which I shall read a small extract.

To us, the first students at the Drawing School, Schatz, with his appearance, with his mixture of Russo-Bulgarian language, with his naivety, with his impractical practicality, with his comradely attitude, and especially with his inspired attitude towards art, was a most interesting personality. In casual conversations, he revealed the wide horizons of art to us and we, who had come with the modest intention to become, after two or three years, teachers of art, we began to dream of becoming Raphaels and Michelangelos.

Dr. Ruja Marinska - Bulgaria.