A Reflection on War
"The Garden of Eden" by Abel Pann
Abel Pann (1883-1963), a prominent Jewish artist, created this fascinating work while trapped in wartime Paris. While it has all the required symbols for an illustration of the Bible story, such as the snake and the apple, there’s something more intended: Pann has developed the images as a commentary on the situation he found himself in.
Emotional Depth
Historical Context
Artistic Mastery
Jewish Heritage
The first image (on the right) is the start of this tryptich. This is the innocent moment – Adam meets Eve for the first time. In the background, the Dinosaurs roam (yes- Pann was a dinosaur fan, see the image below from his ‘creation’ series). This is life before the War, the Garden of Eden when all was peacefull and full of hope.
The main image (below) is ‘The Hinge Moment‘.
Eve has produced the apple, and is holding it up to Adam who is just about to bite…. the critical moment when things changed, like a door on a hinge.
The animals in the background are content, living alongside each other in peace, the felines and crocodiles alongside the fat & happy grass-eaters.
Notice the sly serpent with arms – it also seems to have serrated teeth! .
After 28th July 1914, Europe spun out of control as the chaos and destruction of war took hold. In the background, a typical row of French countryside trees with their coppiced outlines are visible, with a cloud looming behind… soon the cloud of war will envelop them, and they will be left as shattered stumps.
The final image, far left, is the aftermath, the time when things get gloomy. Adam stands looking into the valley – no longer lush, with animals scattered around the landscape alone or in messy piles that can only be interpreted as a fight to the death….. the start of the suffering. The beast beside Adam is particularly evocative, looking powerful in form and nature, perhaps a companion to Adam, but not to be trusted: there’s danger lurking.
Abel Pann, 1883-1963
Abel Pann, Jewish artist, is renowned for his poignant depictions of the Jewish suffering in the pogoms of WWI. Trained alongside Marc Chagall in Belarus, there is a similarity of both the symbolism and the techniques of both. However, while Chagall is very well known, Pann’s work is hardly represented outside Israel. This is surprising, considering the emotional intensity and historical significance of his works. He offers a profound commentary on the human condition and the impact of the conflicts of WWI.
A brief History
Born in Latvia/Belarus, he spent several months in Vitebsk, Belarus, studying under Yehuda Pen, a notable Jewish artist. Another of Pen’s students was Marc Chagall.
In 1898, he was at the Academy of Arts in Odessa: in 1903 he is found in Paris, living in the same apartment building as Modigliani and Chagall. He studied at the French Academy and earnt a living providing illustrations for the Parisian press.
In 1912, he was invited by notable Jewish artist Boris Schatz, who had founded the the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 1906. He traveled to Jerusalem the following year, and taught at the Academy. Deciding to settle in Jerusalem, then part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, he travelled back to Europe to settle his affairs, and was caught up in the beginning of WWI. He remained in Europe for the rest of the war, documenting the suffering of the Jewish populations in a series of engravings and drawings.
A Bezalel drawing class with Abel Pann, Jerusalem 1912
Early Works by Abel Pann
The War Works
While in Fance in 1914, World War 1 was announced, and Pann found himself trapped. He worked as a designer of propaganda posters, and also embarked on a project, to record the real side of war, in particular the suffering of the Jewish people caught between the conflict of France, Germany and the Allies. This resulted in a series of 20 lithographs, many of them extremely disturbing, showing mainly women and children killed by the war… in fact, while an exhibition in America was praised, the same show in Paris was banned as it ‘… would show our allies in bad light’. The allies, of course, were the Russians, who had used the German aggression as an excuse to begin erasing the Jewish populations from the towns they had lived in for centuries – the ‘pogoms’.
This tryptich is the same format as ‘The Garden of Eden’, and is dated 1916-18 – so the same timespan Pann was working on it. There’s also a story being told: the title is ‘Les Traques’, the Hunted. The left panel, which he also engraved as a stand-alone work titled ‘Terror’, shows a young girl cowering in a corner with a small child seeking help. She’s glancing over her shoulder in pure terror, a very uneasy image. The central panel is the forced evacuation through a snowy forrest, with old man, mother, & children trudging miserably though the snowdrifts. The final panel is a despair-filled gloomy forrest with one child looking numb at the spectator. This is Pann at his best, providing an eyewitness account of the horror of the conflict, from the perspective of those caught up in it.
Jerusalem
After the War ended in 1918, Pann finally was able to return to Jerusalem. One reason for him being in Europe when he was trapped was his intention of securing a printing press. We can see his printed products from the war-time Paris years – such as the ‘Garden of Eden’ tryptich – and this was obviously what he was dreaming of continuing in Jerusalem. He finally returned for good in 1920, bringing with him the first artist’s printing press, and creating the first artistic prints in the city.
This was of course a very exciting time to be in this region; with the Ottoman Turks banished, and the mass of refugee Jews from the European conflict , the Promised Land was indeed living up to its name, as masses of people with Jewish roots came back and the nation of Israel was formed.
While he initially took up a teaching position at the Bezalel Academy in Jurusalem, in 1924 he gave this up to concentrate on his artistic endevors. It is from this period his more common prints are found, as he set out to illustrat the Hebrew Bible. There’s an interesting continuation of the themes he has explored already in his earlier works, including the ‘Garden of Eden’ tryptich.
Abel Pann and Marc Chagall
Abel Pann knew Marc Chagall;
They studied at the same institute in Belarus, under the Jewish master Yehuda Penn of the Vitebsk ‘People’s Art School’ . A few years later, they were living in the same apartment building in Paris, while studying at the Academy.
Hardly surprisingly, there are similarities between Pain and Chagall’s work. The photo of Chagall shown here has him in front of a large work of his – note the animals by his elbow. They are remarkably similar to the small sketchy animals in the background of Pann’s ‘Garden of Eden’.
A look through Chagall’s early works will reveal many more cross-overs of themes and ideas; this would be a fertile research area, as the connection isn’t made clear in the literature.
Neanderthals!
An interesting observation to be made about the figures of Adam & Eve is their resemblance to the earliest depictions of the Neanderthals. These ‘primitive men’ had been discovered in the 19th century, and entered popular culture. Pann may have seen them in a journal, or perhaps a museum display. The print shown here is an 1873 depiction, showing the broad face & flattened nose which had been reconstructed from skulls found.
At Auction: our example of rare 1916 "The Garden of Eden"
Bid on this item in our September 13 auction, via Invaluable.
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