Fairytale

Albert Abramovitz

Much like Marc Chagall, Albert Abramovitz was born in Russia and spent the years leading up to World War I in Paris, immersing himself in the exciting world of new and often controversial ideas of artistic expression. It's unknown if the two ever met, but their proximity to one another, as strangers from the same country running in the same circle of luminaries, makes it likely that they came across one another's work in exhibitions. Indeed, Abramovitz was a juror in the Paris Salon for a time.

Either way, their artwork, so entirely different from one another stylistically, shows threads of similarity in another way: their connection to their shared childhood homeland, and the folklore - or perhaps the simple magic - that instilled itself within them.

Here, Abramovitz illustrates a day in the life of a rural Russian village. A closer look, however, sends the viewer into a surrealist fairytale, with the story left entirely to the viewer to decipher. In the sky are a rooster perched upon a cow, a large egg seemingly propelled into the air by a House Hag peeking out of her window, and a Baba Yaga-like figure astride her broom. In the background, a character resembling Ivan the Fool is chased by a soldier on a horse.

Above all, there is a perhaps unintentional relation of this image to what was happening in the world around Abramovitz at the time. By the early 1930s he was living in Los Angeles, California, and was surrounded by the fallout of the Great Depression. His work frequently touched on the struggles of everyday people, as well as the human desire to be immersed in something other than a harsh reality. In this scene, the men of the house appear transfixed by this unusual event while the women perform household chores and discipline children, allowing them no opportunity to witness it themselves.