Serigraph

Abel Pann was born in Lithouania.

He began his artistic studies in Odessa and continued them in Paris. A number of his pictures have been acquired by the French Government, by the Municipality of Paris, by the Museum of Luzembourg and by the Art Institute of Chicago and a series of 45 pictures has been purchased in America for the National Museum of Jerusalem.

The Palestine Art Publishing Co. Ltd Jerusalem

Abel Pann wrote:

The task I have set myself involves a serious responsibility. The enthusiasm which my work arouses in me is often clouded by painful doubts and questionings. For that same Book which has inspired many a genius to produce his masterpiece has proved to be beyond the reach of a far greater number of artists.

A son of the race which produced this marvelous Book. I feel that I, better than some others, may be able to seize its true spirit, and to communicate it to my fellow-men.

But the absolute truth is with G-d alone. Mankind is ever the subject to error. And so I entreat the indulgence of my judges.

Litvinovsky is not a naive painter. He has read all the books! But he has an eye dumbfounded by wonder. An artist both delicate and barbarian, learned and childish, he strangles modern formalism, just as the new abstract academism. He refuses to conform to any injunction and follows his own impulses exclusively.

The first artistic education of Litvinovsky was that of a “fauve”, then of a post-cubist painter. But his lithographs, which are recent works, do not bear the seal of Matisse, nor the traces of George Braque. His volumes have not been dissected. In full possession of his plastics means, Litvinovsky has forsaken the exercises in visual synthesis that date back to the first decade of the century. All his images transcribe ideas through signs that dilineate their object. They are the vocabulary of a hieroglyphic art. They stand out on a pattern of dark strokes, sometimes emphasized by pigmentary tones. They are rendered with a touch of humour, even sarcasm. And in some cases these signs have the magic characteristics of Egyptian and Etruscan paintings.

Litvinovsky, who is a seer, simply walks into the fairy domain of the imagination, justly called by Baudelaire Queen of Talents. This forbidden domain cannot be entered by lovers of prose, of logic and calculation. Only the poets can pass its threshold, these mysterious salesmen of marvels. Litvinovsky reacts against pedestrian mediocrity of daily life and its enslavement. The warp and the woof of his pattern of lines is a web of Archne.

His palette of colours ‘valeurs’ is composed of ultramarine blue, turqoise blue, jade green, Veronese green, amethyst violet, red tones resembling coral islands, yellow tones like blond sea-shells.

This artist reconciles total antagonisms: happy science and the kind of holy ignorance Gauguin mentions in one of his letters.

Litvinovsky is not a naive painter. He has read all the books! But he has an eye dumbfounded by wonder. An artist both delicate and barbarian, learned and childish, he strangles modern formalism, just as the new abstract academism. He refuses to conform to any injunction and follows his own impulses exclusively.

The first artistic education of Litvinovsky was that of a “fauve”, then of a post-cubist painter. But his lithographs, which are recent works, do not bear the seal of Matisse, nor the traces of George Braque. His volumes have not been dissected. In full possession of his plastics means, Litvinovsky has forsaken the exercises in visual synthesis that date back to the first decade of the century. All his images transcribe ideas through signs that dilineate their object. They are the vocabulary of a hieroglyphic art. They stand out on a pattern of dark strokes, sometimes emphasized by pigmentary tones. They are rendered with a touch of humour, even sarcasm. And in some cases these signs have the magic characteristics of Egyptian and Etruscan paintings.

Litvinovsky, who is a seer, simply walks into the fairy domain of the imagination, justly called by Baudelaire Queen of Talents. This forbidden domain cannot be entered by lovers of prose, of logic and calculation. Only the poets can pass its threshold, these mysterious salesmen of marvels. Litvinovsky reacts against pedestrian mediocrity of daily life and its enslavement. The warp and the woof of his pattern of lines is a web of Archne.

His palette of colours ‘valeurs’ is composed of ultramarine blue, turqoise blue, jade green, Veronese green, amethyst violet, red tones resembling coral islands, yellow tones like blond sea-shells.

This artist reconciles total antagonisms: happy science and the kind of holy ignorance Gauguin mentions in one of his letters.