School Of Paris: Chicken Coop, The Seine At Moisson 1939 Ukrainian Jewish Woman Painter

Moussia Toulman, a young Jewish girl born in Ukraine, left for Israel at the age of 19 to become a painter. A few months after her arrival, she married but she did not give up her ambition to study art. She enrolled at the Betzalel Institute in Jerusalem and completed her studies there in 1926. Ambitious and eager to continue her studies, she moved to Paris, then the undisputed capital of the arts, in 1929. She established relationships with other artists, writers and intellectuals, exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and organized a personal exhibition just before the outbreak of the Second World War. It is said that all of the works she displayed in this exhibition were lost without a trace during the war, but the painting shown here, painted in 1939, dates from precisely this period. As a Jew, Moussia Toulman erred in France during the war years. In the years that followed, she continued to paint but hesitated to exhibit her works. With Mane Katz, Jacques Atlan and others she founded an aid organisation which helped Israeli artists during their stay in Paris. A major retrospective of Moussia's work was held at the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod in 2003.