EMMANUEL MANÉ-KATZ (1894-1962)

Born in June 1894, in Kremenchug, Ukraine, Mané-Katz arrived in Paris in 1913 and joined Fernand Cormon’s atelier, where he met and befriended Chaïm Soutine and Marc Chagall. He returned to Russia when the First World War broke out, but made his way back to Paris in 1923 and became a French citizen in 1927. From 1921, Mané-Katz began to exhibit his work in the major Parisian salons and quickly established himself as one of the prominent members of the Ecole de Paris and the Ecole de Montparnasse.
Mané-Katz painted The Torah in 1939 and 1940, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War forced him to flee to New York.
This imposing painting is a particularly striking example of the frank, lively and colourful expressionist style the artist employed in his oeuvre. The subject matter is Simchat Torah, the festival which celebrates the recommencement of the reading of the torah cycle. The artist depicts this important moment in a very festive manner: the children in the foreground invite the spectator into the composition, in the centre musicians are playing, while in the background, crowds are gathered to witness this solemn moment.
In 1961, one year before his death, Mané-Katz wrote: “Should I, out of scrupulous modesty, abstain from saying that I believe I have a message to transmit to the world, a message which, for an artist, has no better agent of transmission than his art itself? I have the impression that all my efforts have always tended towards the delivery of this message”. The message the artist refers to is that of the witness to a two thousand year old Odyssey. Poet of the ghetto and the Synagogue, bearer of a Biblical message, Mané-Katz devoted much of his work to the depiction of the Jewish tradition.