Aronson, Boris

  • Oriental dance, 1922 Gouache and collage on paper24,8 x 20,9 in

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Son of the chief rabbi of kyiv, from 1912 to 1916, after the heder, he attended the kyiv School of Art and the drawing school of Alexander Mourashko. In 1917-1918, he attended the studio of Alexandra Exter, who would strongly influence his work for the theater. Before the First World War, he became friends with young modernist Jewish writers and painters belonging to the Kiev group, and became one of the most ardent defenders of their theory advocating the need to create a new Jewish culture that would be carried by Yiddish. From 1918 to 1920, he was one of the major figures of the Kultur-Lige, for which he founded a museum of Jewish art. In 1919, in collaboration with Ryback, he published in the Yiddish magazine Oyfgang, “The Ways of Jewish Painting”, one of the first manifestos of avant-garde Jewish art. At the end of 1920, he left for Moscow, where he worked for Jewish theaters, in particular for the Kamerny. In 1922, he settled in Berlin and studied in the studio of the engraver Hermann Struck; he participated in the exhibition of Russian art at the van Diemen gallery. He then published the books of Marc Chagall and Sovremennaïa Evreïskaîa Grafika. In Paris, where he then stayed, he made the sketches and costumes for the Danses Assidics by Baruch Agadati. In 1923, he settled in New York where he became chief theater designer, notably for Maurice Schwartz’s Kunst-theater. From 1930, he worked for Broadway theatres: he staged a hundred dramatic shows, operas, ballets and musicals; his style, which mixed cubo-futurism and constructivism, renewed American scenography. He became one of the most prominent theatre designers on Broadway (he would win 2 Tony Awards).

PUBLICATIONS

PRESSE

January 9, 2016 / “How Boris Aronson’s Designs Came To Life”, The Jewish Week, le 4 déc. 2015

December 22, 2015 / “The Works of Yiddish Set Designer Boris Aronson”, Tablet Magazine, le 21 déc. 2015

EXPOSITIONS

Sonate : Boris Aronson & Rainier Lericolais

New York’s Yiddish Theater : From the Bowery to Broadway