Jewish Painters of Montreal

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Jewish Painters of Montreal refers to a group of artists who depicted the social realism of Montreal during the 1930s and 1940s. First used by the media to describe participants of the annual YMHA-YWHA art exhibition, the term was popularized in the 1980s as the artists were exhibited collectively in public galleries across Canada.^[1] In 2009 the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec mounted a touring exhibition Jewish Painters of Montreal: A Witness to Their Time, 1930–1948,^[2] which renewed interest in the group in Montreal,^[3] Toronto,^[4] and Vancouver.^[5]

This collective included two generations of painters — established artists: Jack Beder (1910–1987), Alexander Bercovitch (1891–1951), Eric Goldberg (1890–1959), Louis Muhlstock (1904–2001); those in mid-career: Sam Borenstein (1908–1969), Herman Heimlich (1904–1986), Harry Mayerovitch (1910–2004), Bernard Mayman (1885–1966), Ernst Neumann (1907–1956), Fanny Wiselberg (1906–1986); and those just beginning: Sylvia Ary (1923–2011), Rita Briansky (1925), Ghitta Caiserman-Roth (1923–2005), Alfred Pinsky (1921–1999), and Moses "Moe" Reinblatt (1917–1979).^[1]: 28 As a group during the 30s and 40s, they were united in their choice of subjects — the human figure, Montreal and its people, and the war.^[2] As individual artists, their style varied from socialist realism to stylized expressionism with some the subject of recent museum exhibitions in Montreal, Ottawa or New York.