Todros Geller: Strange Worlds

Todros Geller

STRANGE WORLDS

September 6, 2018 – February 17, 2019

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Spertus Institute

Curated by Ionit Behar and Susan Weininger

A Legacy of Shared Values

By Dr. Keren E. Fraiman

Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership is proud to present Todros Geller: Strange Worlds as part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art and its presenting partner, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. Just as Art Design Chicago shines light on our city’s rich and diverse legacy of artistic innovation, Geller’s work demonstrates the historical ties between social activism and Jewish art in Chicago, the city where Geller planted roots and which became his home.

Like many exhibitions, Todros Geller: Strange Worlds has several interwoven layers. Geller’s work provides a window into the Jewish art scene in the 1930s, yet simultaneously offers insights into contemporary questions of identity and community responsibility, issues that remain central to Judaism today.

To me, one of the remarkable aspects of Spertus Institute’s extensive Geller collection is that his artistic career, community activism, and the issues that he explored reflect the core values that guide our work as an organization.

Todros Geller, The Story of the Jewish People from Abraham to the Creation of the Modern State of Israel, Stained Glass at Anshe Emet Synagogue, Chicago, ca. 1930. Photo by Assaf Evron.

Cover image: Todros Geller, Strange Worlds, 1928.

Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resources, NY.

Lifelong Learning Art has the potential to stimulate personal reflections and connections to Jewish life, community, and culture.

Todros Geller’s works reveal his own reckoning with questions of tradition and modernity, particularism and universality, and desolation and hope.

Additionally, Geller’s Spertus affiliation exemplifies our institution’s historic and ongoing commitment to excellent, multifaceted Jewish education. In the mid-1940s alongside several prominent colleagues, Todros Geller, who was an educator as well as a practitioner, was among the first faculty to engage students in the arts at the institution that ultimately would become Spertus. The arts continue to be an integral and integrated component of the framework that guides our work today. It is fitting that Geller’s exhibition is located within the Ground Level Arts Lab, an innovative space for meaningful learning and lively conversations. The diverse backgrounds, perspectives,

and interests of visitors will further enrich the exhibition and we hope it will create a mosaic of experiences not typically found in more traditional Jewish institutions. Spertus Institute’s commitment to the arts reflects our desire to foster an environment in which creative individuals come together to engage, inspire, and enrich themselves and each other.

Collaboration Todros Geller believed in collaboration. He hosted weekly gatherings for artists, writers, and thinkers. He affiliated with organizations from prestigious museums to start-up guilds, from political fundraising initiatives to educational publishers. Throughout his life, he was reaching out, teaching, working, and thinking together with other artists. Similarly, through this exhibition’s affiliation with Art Design Chicago, Spertus Institute is proudly partnering with large and small organizations across the region, from the Art Institute of Chicago (where Geller studied) to Theaster Gates’ Stony Island Arts Bank (located not far from the site that inspired Geller’s South of Chicago) to the National Museum of Mexican Art (where exhibitions explore themes of immigration that resonate with Geller’s work).

Jewish community, and as global citizens. The enduring nature of these societal questions is still resonant in Geller’s work. His remarkable pieces offer insights and inspire conversations about current affairs today. Yet despite his engagement with tough questions in difficult times, Geller never deviated from his message of hope, often represented in his work as a sapling, expressing growth and potential. It is our hope that Geller’s optimism serves as inspiration for growth, potential, and an embrace of community in our own lives.

Community Responsibility Lastly, central to the core values of Spertus Institute is our ongoing engagement with contemporary issues facing the Jewish community. In his works, Geller explored immigration, income equity, and labor rights, as well as religion and faith. Todros Geller: Strange Worlds kicks off our year of focusing institutionally and programmatically on the issue of responsibility—as individuals, as members of the

Todros Geller in his studio, 1942.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago.

Dr. Keren Fraiman is Dean and Chief Academic Officer of Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership.

She received her PhD in International Relations and Security Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her BA in Political Science and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from The University of Chicago.

Finding Home in Chicago

By Ionit Behar

“[The American Jew] stands on the map of two worlds, not at home in either. His self is divided between the world that he has deserted and the world that will have none of him.”

— Louis Wirth, The Ghetto (1928) 1

Todros Geller, born in Vinnitza, Ukraine in 1889, emigrated to Chicago in 1918 by way of Montreal, Canada. He made Chicago his home and became a leading actor in Chicago’s Jewish cultural politics.

He proclaimed himself “progressive” and “Yiddishist,” embracing the then-flexible concept of “Yiddishism,” an idea constantly being invented, changed, and challenged. Like Geller, Chicago Yiddishists were generally progressive and aligned with the Jewish left. They were nationalists and internationalists— sometimes both. Sara Abrevaya Stein explains that among them, “references to political parties are rare in documents of this period […] occasionally, particularly beginning in the late 1930s, this was the result of bashfulness, fear, or strategy.” 2 Therefore, Jewish cultural work was complex, but essential in shaping Jewish politics and identity in a particular time and place.

For Geller, being a Yiddishist meant a commitment to centering the Yiddish language at the heart of his cultural production. Interestingly, however, most of Geller’s portfolios (such as the Yiddish motifs, 1926) were published bilingually in both Yiddish and English, revealing that although he sought to advance Yiddish presence in Chicago, he did not want to alienate the English-reading public. Publishing bilingually was a way to open up his work to different communities and engage different audiences.

Geller’s representations of different subjects— especially his fascination with Native Americans and Black Americans—were part of his overall enthusiasm for American culture. He aimed to get to know this new place and society better, always with one foot in and another out. He lived in two worlds at once: Jewish and assimilated American. Daniel Greene calls

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Todros Geller, South of Chicago, 1937, Wood engraving.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago.

this wrestling with “the modern American Jewish dilemma of living between two worlds, and not being fully at home in either.” 3 Geller’s intention to integrate and combine different cultures and identities is a fundamental part of his work and cultural activism. As an immigrant American Jew, he embodied the anxieties and concerns at the center of discussions of modernity. While he portrayed Chicago numerous times, he was well aware that he was an immigrant. In works like Maxwell Street (1926), Milkweed and Skyscrapers (ca. 1930), and South of Chicago (1937), he represented the city as a calm, modern, and manageable place. His urban and industrial landscapes give the sense of Chicago being homey; they project hopefulness of truly finding a home in a new place.

In South of Chicago (1937) and Untitled (ca. 1930), Geller includes workers in the foreground of the industrial landscape composition. As an artist, Geller identified with the avant-garde but as a struggling immigrant, he was also aligned with workers and the labor movement. Being an artist in Depression-ridden Chicago was anything but easy. While his employment by the Federal Work Project Administration (WPA) as a graphic artist and mural painter was for economic reasons, it was also a way to become more integrated into American society. At the time, people referred to a WPA artistic style, describing a genre of realist art depicting varied American experiences.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Jews were leaving the dense Jewish communities of Chicago’s South and West Sides

(such as the neighborhood around Maxwell Street) and moving to the suburbs. With this dispersion, there was apprehension of how Jewish communities would endure in the United States amidst the opportunities of assimilation. It was different being a Jew in Chicago than being a Jew in New York, for example. New York was still the cultural center of American Jewry, with a well-established Jewish community. Louis Wirth said, “If you would know what kind of a Jew a man is, ask him where he lives; for no single factor indicates as much about the character of the Jew as the area in which he lives.” 4 This is very much true today, even though we are in a hyper-globalized world: living as a Jew in the United States is different than living in Israel or South America.

Chicago in the early twentieth century offered something different to each resident, depending on their class, age, and immigrant experience. At the Hull House—the historic settlement in Chicago just a few blocks away from the Maxwell Street district—Geller worked alongside other Jewish artists, as well as Mexican and African American artists, to promote the benefits of artistic practice among immigrants. Hull House helped pass critical legislation and influenced public policy, and it was where immigrants came to learn and debate political issues.

Geller lived in a time that was challenging in many ways. Antisemitism was on the rise in the United States and the world, there was a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, and the passage of restrictive immigration quotas. As a civically-engaged artist, Geller believed that art had a role to play in changing the world. He aligned himself with other artists who similarly advocated for dignity, understanding, and openness, and—most importantly—who fought to preserve democracy and freedom of expression.

Todros Geller, Industrial Scene, for WPA, 1938, Watercolor.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago.

Ionit Behar is the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. Behar is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation is titled Minimalism as Resistance: Margarita Paksa in Argentina’s Military Dictatorship. Her interests are focused on 20th-century Latin American and North American art, the history of exhibitions, sculpture after 1960, and theories of space and place.

1 Louis Wirth, “The Return to the Ghetto” in The Ghetto (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, reprinted 1929), 265.

2 Sarah Abrevaya Stein, “Illustrating Chicago’s Jewish Left: The Cultural Aesthetics of Todros Geller and the L.M. Shteyn Farlag,” Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Spring-Summer, 1997), 76.

3 Daniel Greene, “Vanishing Point: Louis Wirth and Todros Geller on Maxwell Street,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Volume 35, Number 4, Summer 2017, 63.

4 Wirth, “The Ghetto,” American Journal of Sociology 33 (July 1927): 68.

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Strange Worlds | The Art of Todros Geller

By Susan Weininger

Todros Geller was known as the “Dean of Chicago Jewish Artists” but he was much more than that.

Although he often addressed Jewish subjects in his work and was a vocal, lifelong proponent of the idea that there was something identifiable as Jewish Art, his work argues against this premise. He did indeed focus on Jewish subject matter in his fine art, decorative, and more commercial work. However, he was also an avid chronicler of the urban and rural landscape, a painter of voluptuous nudes, and he even experimented with the fantasy style called “magic realism,” so popular in Chicago at the time.

Many of his works looked at the contrast between the old world and the new, the young and the old, the religious and the secular, displaying both hope and despair, drawing on his own knowledge of what it was to straddle two worlds. He produced prodigiously in a wide variety of media. Combined with administrative and teaching jobs at the Board of Jewish Education, the College of Jewish Studies (now Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership) and elsewhere, regular lectures introducing Jewish Art, and his active dedication to a number of artists’ organizations, he

had a very busy professional life. Although Geller’s work has been exhibited in group shows over the years, this presentation is the first solo exhibition since the one commemorating his death in 1949, held at the College of Jewish Studies building on 11th Street.

Geller was born in Vinnitza, Ukraine in 1889 and immigrated to Montreal, Canada in 1906, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. Eventually, he worked in Canada as a photographer, travelling across the country. In 1913 he married and in 1918 moved to Chicago, where he began studying at the School of the Art Institute while working at night. He entered the School at an opportune moment. The Ashcan School artist George Bellows, followed by Randall Davey, were invited as visiting professors in 1919-20. Geller chose to study with Bellows, who inspired the generation of students such as Fred Biesel and Frances Strain who formed the core of the modernist movement in Chicago. In contrast to the hierarchically structured and rule-bound classes led by many traditional instructors at the time, Bellows encouraged students to follow their own inclinations, to break free from artificial rules and restrictions, as well as advocating a gospel of democracy.

When he graduated in 1922, Geller was already involved in teaching at the Jewish People’s Institute (JPI), a kind of Jewish settlement house (and forerunner of the Jewish Community Centers) that provided a touchstone for the immigrant community.

He quickly began exhibiting. In what seems to have been his earliest exhibition in Chicago, at the WarrenEdwards Art Gallery in 1923, a review in the Chicago Evening Post from February 1, 1923, described him as “a primarily a landscape painter.” While that was true, Geller addressed other subjects in his oils and watercolors, and soon established himself as a masterful printmaker, sculptor, and designer of largescale stained glass and fabrics, seemingly capable of producing high quality work in all of those media.

Todros Geller, Stone Crushers, 1939, Wood engraving.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago.

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During this period, Chicago was a vibrant center of Jewish life, with thirteen Jewish publishing

Todros Geller, The Dance, 1928, Oil on canvas.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago.

presses, more than 100,000 Yiddish speakers, and active cultural and political outlets. The Jewish art community had its own infrastructure, including patrons and galleries (from A. Raymond Katz’s Little Gallery in the tower of the Auditorium Building to Katharine Kuh’s gallery that introduced Chicagoans to European and American modernism). Jewish writers and critics, such as J. Z. Jacobson and Sam Putnam, promoted both the Jewish and wider art community.

The Jewish publishing house run by L. M. Stein (for which Geller designed the logo), was responsible for bringing much of this work to the public.

Inspired by an Art Institute exhibition of the work of Abel Pann, a Jewish artist working in Palestine, Jewish artists formed “Around the Palette” in 1926 with Geller as a founding member. That year there was a large exhibition at the JPI, including most of the local Jewish artists—no matter their stylistic or philosophical predilections. JPI offered art classes where many of these artists, including Geller (from 1920-27), taught, studied, and exhibited. In 1940, with war already underway in Europe, the group changed its name to “The American Jewish Art Club” (now called the American Jewish Artists Club) in solidarity with its brethren overseas. Geller remained an active member.

The poles represented by the conservative School of the Art Institute, with its tradition of European

beaux-arts pedagogy, and the JPI, with its emphasis on Jewish culture, express the often contradictory worlds in which Chicago Jewish artists functioned in the early 20th century. Like Geller, most had little connection to ritual observance; indeed, it was the very opportunity to assimilate, so characteristic of the Jewish experience in the United States, that made the visual arts a possible career for Jews in a way not seen before. Along with other members of the community, Geller aligned himself with the avant-garde, represented by a group of “radicals” who rebelled against the strictures of the institutional conservatism of the Art Institute. Artists joined together to protest the rigidity of the jury system that decided who would be included in the yearly American and Chicago exhibitions at the Art Institute, establishing the Chicago No-Jury Society of Artists in 1922. Geller exhibited regularly at both the Art Institute and other secular institutions throughout the United States and Canada, as well as with alternative independent artist groups such as the No-Jury Society.

By 1926, when L. M. Stein published the seven woodcuts that made up Yiddish Motifs, the first of four print portfolios that Stein and Geller would produce together, Geller was well known and had established his mature style, preferred subject matter, and signature medium: the woodcut. Geller produced prints throughout his career; one woodblock could yield many copies and the relatively low cost gave people with limited means the opportunity to own original art. The subjects of Geller’s prints, in this case, were of Jewish life. These had great appeal and were found in many Jewish homes in this period.

The woodcut Yidl mitn Fidl (Yiddish Musicians) was done in 1926 for the publication of Yiddish Motifs.

Its angular abstracted background and the flattened decorative shapes of the figures show an increased engagement with modernist style, evidence of Geller’s move away from conventional perspective and spatial relations. The print run of 150 immediately sold out and Geller used the proceeds to finance a trip to find

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by Geller’s wife Olga. After Armin’s departure, Belle Goldschlager Baranceanu became Geller’s studio mate. They worked closely together, forming the Midwest Art Students League and teaching classes.

Baranceanu helped Geller with his increasingly large number of commissions, most notably the illustrations for Rose Lurie’s The Great March: Post-Biblical Jewish Stories.

Todros Geller, Liberty Window, 1941, Anshe Emet Synagogue, Chicago. Photo by Assaf Evron.

the sources of Jewish art. He visited Paris, where he met Chagall; he studied manuscripts in England and France; went to old synagogues in Prague; and ultimately visited Palestine. He did a number of paintings based on his time in Palestine and the woodcuts he produced were published by L.M. Stein in a folio titled Palestinian Motifs Cut in Wood (1930).

These woodcuts ranged from landscapes, to street scenes and explorations of daily life to images of pioneers working the land (The Pioneer, ca. 1930).

The latter image was reworked in a design for a large stained glass window in Chicago’s Anshe Emet Synagogue, picturing settlers cultivating the land in what was to become the State of Israel.

His trip also inspired Untitled (two men) (1927) an image of a pioneer holding a flourishing plant above the about-to-bloom landscape, while a traditionally dressed Jewish man looks on. Geller shows the differences between the old world of rigid religious practice and the new world of the secular Zionist, a contrast that is a persistent theme. His painting Strange Worlds (1928), now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, explores a similar theme. An old man, whose features and somber garb are redolent of the Shtetl, looks out at the viewer from his newsstand under the iron staircase leading up to Chicago’s “L” station; in the brighter background is a modern,

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almost futuristic cityscape through which office workers and pedestrians dash in a blur of activity.

Throughout Geller’s career the tension between these two worlds is evident—the fear of complete assimilation a potent threat.

The narrative frescoes from the synagogue at Dura Europas in Syria—securely dated to 240 C.E. and recently uncovered—were evidence that Jewish artists had made figural art from a very early time. Geller was inspired by the history of Jewish art he encountered on his trip, and upon his return to Chicago, he initiated an effort to establish a Museum of Jewish Art—the first anywhere—and organized an exhibition at JPI in 1928 to showcase the rich heritage of Jewish art, then largely unknown. The show travelled and so did Geller, lecturing in Yiddish and teaching people about the heritage of Jewish art. In J. Z. Jacobson’s words, “his fight for the development and expansion of Yiddish culture and Jewish Nationalism in harmony with the political, economic, and cultural liberation of all peoples of the world.” His commitment to social justice becomes an enduring aspect of his work.

In Geller’s studio at 59 E. Adams, he shared space with another Jewish artist, Emil Armin. The studio became a gathering place for artists and writers including David Bekker, Joshua Kaganove, and A. Raymond Katz, who often spent Friday nights debating, with food served

Geller’s studio was replete with a vast collection of objects from all over the world. Like many modernists, he was fond of primitive art, seeing in it a connection to spirituality untainted by the materialism of Western civilization.

Many modernist artists travelled to the American Southwest to explore such authenticity, observing Native Americans and their connection with the landscape. Geller was no exception, and he produced paintings and prints such as Spanish American (1936) and the related Untitled (Man in Hat), as well as Profiles (Southwest Scene) (1937).

As the Depression deepened, the government instituted projects that offered support and employment to artists under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). In addition to his printmaking for the Federal Art Project (FAP), Geller supervised paintings of Osage Indians for the newly opened Osage Tribal Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

During this period of social and political upheaval, Geller turned toward themes of social justice and the urban environment.

Geller was a committed socialist who saw the future of Judaism in a national community bound by Yiddish.

He was an advocate for the downtrodden and thought of his art (like many in the 1930s) as an agent of social change, a way to enact tikkun olam, repair of the world. The image of workers toiling in the snow in a landscape dominated by Chicago steel mills is both a glorification of the working man and a vision of crushing labor. The Past Shall not be Repeated (1937, in the folio For Spain and Liberty published by

the American Artists Congress), is a powerful cry for justice. His contribution to A Gift to Birobidzhan, a portfolio of prints by Chicago Jewish artists to benefit the Jewish Autonomous Region in Siberia, includes his cover design encapsulating the movement from despair to hope that so many Jewish people saw in the establishment of this settlement. His woodcut for the portfolio, Raisins and Almonds, was based on a folk lullaby. It traces the journey from the old country to a new world of unrest and upheaval, culminating in the planting of a tree. The goat that Geller took as his personal emblem, a multivalent symbol in Judaism associated with spirituality and purity, appears in the foreground.

In 1937, L.M. Stein published the portfolio From Land to Land, including more than fifty prints with subjects that range from folkloric to urban to scenes of the southwest. The endpapers symbolize the journey to a new land of hope. In them, Geller’s goats look across the ocean to the shining future.

During World War II, Geller did a series of prints responding to the Holocaust—as well as a painting

Todros Geller, Mural Sketch for the Covenant Club or Sketch for Lincoln Mural, 1946, Watercolor.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago.

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Exhibition Checklist

1947, he won a competition to design a mural for the Covenant Club of Chicago. Although the finished mural no longer exists, Geller’s design included Abraham Lincoln, Moses receiving the Law, Jacob dreaming of the angels, and Malachi reading the text “Hath not god created us all,” reminding us of the universality of humankind.

Large-scale stained-glass commissions—such as The Liberty Window (1941) at Anshe Emet Synagogue— embody the dreams of many immigrant Jews. The Statue of Liberty is shown against the skyline of New York, flanked by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Symbolizing the hopes and dreams America embodied, it is significant that it is in a place of honor in Anshe Emet’s large sanctuary.

Todros Geller, Another Crucifixion or The Martyr, 1942, Oil on canvas.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago.

called Another Crucifixion or The Martyr (1942).

This reference to the fate of those stranded in Nazi-occupied territories is a poignant use of the vocabulary of Christianity to call attention to the plight of Jewish people.

Geller was the recipient of many prizes and awards, including three from the Library of Congress. In

Sam Putnam described Geller’s work as “the Talmud read to the rhythm of an elevated train.” The balance of old and new, tradition and modernity, religion and secularism is central to his work. His assertion that the measure of an artist’s success “is mostly gauged by the extent to which, within the methods he chooses to employ, he causes the viewer of his work to participate in the insight which brought the work of art into existence” is clearly fulfilled. By virtue of his commitment and prodigious output, he presents a vision of where we came from, where we are, and where we might be going.

Susan Weininger is Professor Emerita of Art History at Roosevelt University. She has curated exhibitions and written extensively on Chicago artists including Gertrude Abercrombie, Ivan Albright, Tunis Ponsen, Francis Chapin, Romolo Roberti, and Paul Kelpe, as well as modernist Chicago art in general. She co-curated Chicago Modern, 1893-1945: The Pursuit of the New (2004) and most recently wrote an essay for the exhibition Gertrude Abercrombie: Portrait of the Artist as a Landscape at the Elmhurst Art Museum.

Yiddish Motifs, 1926 Portfolio of 7 woodcuts 13 ½ x 18.½ in.

Bernard Friedman Collection Untitled (two men), 1927 Oil on canvas 17 x 20 in.

Bernard Friedman Collection The Dance, 1928 Oil on canvas 45 x 41 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Poet of Black Thoughts, 1929 Oil on canvas 25 x 21 ¼ in.

Collection of Clifford Law Offices, Chicago Nude, ca. 1930 Wood engraving 8 x 10 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman Michigan Ave Bridge, 1930 Oil on canvas 22 ¾ x 21 in.

Richard Silverman Collection Untitled, 1930 Conte crayon drawing 11 ½ x 8.½ in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of Michele Vishny Crossroads, 1930 Oil on canvas 32 x 28 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman Jerusalem Beggar, 1930 Oil on canvas 55 ½ x 36 in.

David I. Silverman Collection Shtetl Scene, 1930 Oil on canvas 39 x 40 in.

Strilky Collection Black Venus, 1932 Oil on canvas 57 ¼ x 80 in.

Strilky Collection Broken Cord, 1933 Hammered copper 24 x 13 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of Nina and Walter Deitch and Maia and Gerald Mullin

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Shabbtai Zvi, 1933 Lithograph 14 x 17 in Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman

Profiles (South West scene), 1937 Tempera 23 ¾ x 26 ¾ in.

Olga Weiss and Dr. George Honig Collection

Shul Gass, ca. 1933 Lithograph 13 x 17 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman

Industrial Scene, for WPA, 1938 Watercolor 22 x 28 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman

Job and his Friends, 1934 Lithograph 16 x 12 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman

Stone Crushers, 1939 Wood engraving and ink on paper 17 x 21 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman

Untitled Southwest Scene, 1934 Lithograph 18 x 22 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago

The Friends of Job, 1940 Tempera on hardboard 30 x 24 in Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Jerome M. Yochim in memory of Maurice and Louise Yochim

Untitled (Man in Hat), ca. 1934 Oil on canvas 25 ¾ x 22 in.

Beth Shandling Collection Mexican Village or Aqua Fria, 1935 Oil on canvas 15 ¾ x 20 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman Untitled, ca. 1935 Gouache on cardboard 14 x 11 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Spanish American, 1936 Woodcut and ink on paper 6 x 4 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman Raisins and Almonds (Birobidzhan portfolio), 1937 Woodcut and black ink on paper 10 x 8 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago

Grain Elevator, 1941 Black and red ink on Japanese paper 6 x 4 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman Another Crucifixion, 1942 Oil on canvas 40 x 30 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman Siesta, 1942 Tempera on paper 17 x 23 in Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman Mural Sketch for the Covenant Club or Sketch for Lincoln Mural, 1946 Watercolor 24 x 29 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman

South of Chicago, 1937 Wood engraving 8 x 10 in.

Bernard Friedman Collection

The Milkweed and Skyscraper, n.d.

Print on paper 23 x 20 ¼ in.

Olga Weiss and Dr. George Honig Collection

North Side, 1937 Wood Engraving 10 x 8 in.

Spertus Institute Collection, Chicago Gift of David I. Silverman

Untitled (Reclining nude), n.d.

Oil on canvas 33 ½ x 35 ½ in.

Olga Weiss and Dr. George Honig Collection

PUBLIC PROGRAMS All programs are at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership 610 South Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

Thursday, September 6, 2018 | 5:30 pm – 8 pm | Free

Opening Reception

Sunday, November 4, 2018 | 3 pm – 4 pm | Free

Gallery Talk

Exhibition Curators Ionit Behar and Susan Weininger Tuesday, November 20, 2018 | 6 pm – 7:30 pm | $8-$18

Between the World Wars: Jewish and African American Art in Chicago

Exhibition Curator Susan Weininger, artist Faheem Majeed, arts advocate John Corbett, and Art Institute of Chicago Curator Sarah Kelly Oehler Thursday, December 13, 2018 | 6 pm – 7:30 pm | $8-$18

Segregation and Integration in Chicago Art

Dr. Deborah Dash Moore and journalist Maudlyne Ihejirika

Todros Geller: Strange Worlds is part of Art Design Chicago, exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art with presenting partner, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

A partner in serving our community with the Jewish United Fund

Todros Geller: Strange Worlds is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Exhibitions at Spertus Institute are also made possible through the generous support of the Harry and Sadie Lasky and Charles & M.R. Shapiro Foundations.

Todros Geller: Strange Worlds is co-curated by Ionit Behar, Spertus Institute Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, and Susan Weininger, Roosevelt University Professor Emerita of Art History.