19 August 2026

Exhibition “Tanchum Kaplan. From Words to Images”

Tanchum ben Levi Kaplan (Kaplun; 1902–1980) was born in Rahachow (Rogachev), a town in what was then the Mogilev Governorate – a traditional Litvak region. Later, life circumstances in the Soviet Union, where the expression of Jewish national identity was suppressed or persecuted, forced him to change his name to Anatoly Kaplan. However, his work became a declaration of this identity, and he himself emerged as one of the most prominent figures in 20th-century Jewish art. 

Kaplan began to explore Jewish themes in 1930, after graduating from the Leningrad (now St Petersburg) Higher Institute of Art and Technology. Kaplan later produced several dozen lithographs that reflected a significant trend in his work – the interplay between associations with Jewish literature and his personal memories. The artist and his family spent the Second World War in evacuation, but his parents and other relatives who remained in Rahachow were murdered by the Nazis between 1941 and 1943. 

After the war, it took Kaplan quite some time to return to Jewish themes. But in 1953–1954, he rediscovered Sholem Aleichem – one of the few Jewish writers not erased from literary history by the ideologues of the Soviet regime. Kaplan created over fifty colour lithographs based on Sholem Aleichem’s 1901 novella ‘The Bewitched Tailor’. Between 1950 and 1960, Kaplan produced several more series that demonstrated true mastery. These include color lithographs based on motifs from Jewish folk songs and the traditional Passover song ‘The Little Goat’, as well as around a hundred black-and-white lithographs based on Sholem Aleichem’s novels ‘Stempenyu’ (1888) and ‘Tevye the Dairyman’ (1894–1899). 

In 1960, Eric Estorick, an American collector and owner of the Grosvenor Gallery in London, became captivated by Kaplan’s lithographs and organized exhibitions of them in London and New York; as a result, the artist became known in the West and was awarded prizes on numerous occasions at international book illustration exhibitions. He was virtually the only artist in the Soviet Union permitted to explore Jewish themes in his work and to preserve the Jewish artistic tradition. 

The Tanchum Kaplan exhibition at the National Library of Lithuania features works from the series ‘The Bewitched Tailor’, ‘Stempenyu’, ‘Jewish Folk Songs’ and ‘One Little Goat’ from the collection of Tanya Rubinstein-Horowitz (Germany–Israel). The exhibition is curated by Dr Olga Sugrobova-Roth (Germany), with Dr Lara Lempertienė (Judaica Research Center) acting as consultant and text editor. 

Our sincere thanks go to Daumantas Levas Todesas, Chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Cultural Heritage Route Association, for his assistance in organising the exhibition. 

Tanya Rubinstein-Horowitz comes from a family of collectors. Her grandfather, the legendary collector Jakov Rubinstein (born in 1901 in Warsaw, died in 1983 in Moscow), succeeded in amassing one of the most remarkable collections of works by artists from the first third of the 20th century who lived and worked within the territories of the Tsarist Empire and the USSR. Through his collecting activities, he was one of the first to lift the veil on the work of forgotten, officially unrecognised artists, who often suffered under Stalinist repression. Tanya Rubinstein-Horowitz followed in her grandfather’s footsteps. In 2025, works from her collection were exhibited in the synagogues of Joniškis and Kėdainiai. 

Pianist Adam Chen-Adamov and cellist Alma Bar-Sinai (Israel) will perform at the exhibition opening. 

Exhibition team: Algirdas Jakas, Akvilė Paukštytė, Daura Polonskytė, Viltė Barbora Viliūnaitė, Jolanta Kanapickaitė, Žilvinas Baranauskas. Texts were translated from Yiddish by Aistė Puidokaitė and Rasa Stakauskaitė. 

Visitors will be able to view the exhibition in the 5th floor atrium of the National Library until 4 November 2026.