PIRKE ABOTH IN ETCHINGS

Academy Photo Offset: New York, 1940. (ft) Hardcover, 4to, 124 pages, plates, 35cm. In Yiddish. SUBJECT(S) : Mishnah. Avot -- Illustrations. Parallel texts in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. "Yiddish by Yehoash. " "English by B. Halper. " Raskin (1878-1966) was an "illustrator, painter, printmaker, critic. Born in Nogaisk, Russia, Raskin studied lithography in Odessa, and attended art academies in Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy. In 1904, he emigrated to the U. S. He worked in many media and garnered a reputation for his draftsmanlike attention to detail and his realistic approach. His imagery depicted scenes of Jewish life, especially that of New York's Lower East Side. His trips to Palestine yielded many representations of that country's Jewish population, among them twenty lithographs of Jerusalem. Raskin also illustrated many Hebrew texts. Pirke Aboth demonstrates Raskin's wonderful sense of design; he makes dramatic use of blank space as a component of his compositions as well as underscores the meaning of each of the book's sections with a powerful combination of human and fantastic forms, each revealing carefully rendered details of expression. His work has been collected by many major museums and galleries, including the Brooklyn Museum" (Buchwald in EJ 2007) . Ex library with usual markings. Cover loose. Wear to binding. Good condition. (Art-3-14).