The bearing of the cross.

Drawing, pen and Indian ink, 34 x 64 cm, vellum paper, signed at lower right corner "J. Ryback".

Stuck under passe-partout.

Intriguing drawing by the Russian Jewish artist Ryback (1897-1935). He is one of the most important representatives of the Jewish avant-garde in the 1910s and 1920s. During the October Revolution in 1917, he took part in multiple activities to redefine avant-garde Yiddish culture, and so went to Moscow. After his father was killed by Petljura's soldiers in the pogroms in Ukraine, he fled in April 1921 to Kaunas and in October 1921 he obtained a visa for Germany. He was in Berlin until 1924. In 1926 he emigrated to Paris and did not return to Russia. In 1928 he had a separate exhibition in the "Galerie aux Quatre Chemins“ and in 1929 in the "Galerie L’Art Contemporain“. His style of painting had turned to the Expressionist colouring of the School of Paris in the interwar period. Further exhibitions followed at galleries in The Hague, Rotterdam, Brussels and Antwerp. This drawing probably dates from this last period.