The Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music (WarszawskaJesień) is one of Europe’s longest-running festivals of contemporary music. With two exceptions (1957 and 1982), the…
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Nathan Alterman emigrated to Palestine in 1925 at the age of fifteen. One of the most prominent Hebrew poets of his…
Born in Warsaw in 1897 to a Jewish Franco-Polish family, Jean Epstein was an early queer filmmaker, poet, and theorist. Epstein is best remembered for…
Born into a wealthy landed family, Gombrowicz debuted in the avant-garde milieu of interwar Warsaw. In 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, he was on…
Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Leoncin, Poland, where his father was a Hasidic rabbi. He grew up between 1908–1917 in Warsaw and from 1917–1921…
Di Khalyastre (also Di Khaliastra, ‘The Gang’ in Yiddish) was a major Yiddish avant-garde movement and literary magazine active in Warsaw between 1922 and 1924.…
Born Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport near Vitebsk, Belarus, S. An-sky was a Jewish Russian intellectual, political and social activist, journalist, Yiddish ethnographer, poet, writer, and dramatist, whose…
Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, or I. L. Peretz (1835–1917), was a Yiddish and Hebrew writer, known for introducing modernist trends into Yiddish literature. Born in the…
Itsik Manger was a prominent Yiddish poet, playwright, and prose writer – a ‘master tailor’ of the written word. He entered the field of Jewish…
Uri Nissan Gnessin was a Russian Jewish author, who is recognized as one of the founders of Modern Hebrew literature. He was born in Starodub,…
Krzysztof Kieślowski was a highly influential Polish filmmaker in the tradition of auteur cinema. Kieślowski tackled the tension between the political, spiritual, and ethical, and…
The Polish painter, graphic designer and art critic Henryk Berlewi was one of the outstanding figures of Polish Constructivism and the Yiddish Avant-Garde. As a…
Teresa Żarnower was a Polish painter, graphic artist, sculptor, and stage/architectural designer. One of the most prominent representatives of Polish Constructivism, Żarnower was also linked…
Micha Yosef Berdyczewski was a Ukrainian-born writer, journalist and Hebrew scholar who is best known for his modernist writings on the Jewish faith. The son…
Andrezj Wajda is a Polish film and theater director, best known for his politically engaged films exploring Polish history, and his collaboration with the actor…
Upon immigrating to Montreal in 1944, Ruth Abramovitsch (also known as Abramowitz) Sorel was one of the first dancers to regularly teach and perform modern…
Avot Yeshurun was a renowned Hebrew poet who remained split between two cities throughout his life: his childhood village Krasnistav and the city of Tel-Aviv,…
Toronto-born Saida Gerrard was one of the first artists to import modern dance to Canada following study in the United States. Her early training included…
Yosef Hayim Brenner was born in 1881 in Novi Mlini, in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine). Like many Hebrew and Yiddish writers of his generation,…
Mass Observation was founded in 1937 by filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, poet Charles Madge, and ethnologist and explorer Tom Harrisson. It was originally conceived as a…
Moyshe Kulbak was a leading Yiddish modernist poet, novelist, and playwright. Born in Smorgon near Vilna, he received a traditional religious education. His youthful works…
Hayim Nahman Bialik was one of the most influential and widely-read Hebrew poets of the twentieth century. He revitalized modern Hebrew poetry with his romantic…
Coriún Aharonián was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on August 4, 1940. His parents, Nubar Aharonián and Victoria Kharputlián, arrived in Uruguay in 1927 and 1928,…
The most important writer of old Yiddish literature was Elijah Levita (a.k.a. Elye Bokher, 1469–1549), who adapted the Italian version of the chivalric romance Bevis of Hampton into…