LOUIS (YUDE-LEYB) LOZOVIK (LOZOWICK)

LOUIS (YUDE-LEYB) LOZOVIK (LOZOWICK) (December 10, 1892-September 9, 1973)

            He was born in the village of Lyudvinovka, Kiev district, Ukraine, into a very devout home.  He studied Hebrew with a neighbor in the village and Russian in the village public school.  He then attended religious primary school in the nearby towns of Germanovka and Obikhiv, before moving on to study at the Vasyl’kiv yeshiva, where he boarded with different families different days of the week (“eating days”).  An older brother took him out of the yeshiva, took him along to Kiev, and left him to study with a Russian teacher.  In 1904 he came upon the Kiev art school, where he also studied general subject matter.  He survived the 1905 Revolution and the pogrom against Jew in Kiev.  In 1906 he joined a brother in the United States, where he engaged in a number of different trades, while at the same time continuing his education.  Over the years 1912-1915, he studied art in the New Jersey National Academy of Design; and 1915-1918, he studied at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where he graduated with high honors.  Right afterward he joined the American army and remained in Europe after the war.  Over the years 1920-1921, he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and visited Italy and Russia.  He returned to the United States in 1924.  He was active in various artists’ associations.  From 1922 he was contributing to art exhibitions in a number of countries and cities in Europe and America.  He was well known as a painter—a constructivist as well as a writer on art in several languages.  In Yiddish he published articles on art in: Di vokh (The week) in New York (1914-1915); in Tsukunft (Future) in New York he published a series of articles on the history of art (over the years 1914-1916), an essay on William Morris (1917), and an article on Russian art (1921); in Unzer bukh (Our book) in New York (1927-1929), he brought out a series of essays on Jewish artists (Liberman, Baksht, Lipchitz, Chagall, Altman, and others).  He also placed articles on painting and theater in: Kultur (Culture) in Chicago; Der hamer (The hammer) and Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture) in New York.  In Ikuf-almanakh (Almanac of the Jewish Cultural Association) (New York, 1961, pp. 421-38), he published (translated from the English original) his work on the “famed American Jewish artist Solomon Nunes Carvalho.”  He also published articles on art in English, French, and Russian art journals, as well as general English publications, such as The Nation and New Masses.  His books include: Hundert hayntsaytike amerikaner yidishe maler un skulptorn (100 contemporary American Jewish painters and sculptors) in Yiddish and English (New York, 1947), 220 pp.; Modern Russian Art (New York, 1925), 60 pp., earlier published in French in Transitions in Paris and translated into Yiddish in Vilner tog (Vilna Day) in 1922.  He died in South Orange, New Jersey.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2 (who gives a birth date of January 1891); R. Lif, in Sefer hashana liyehude amerika (Annual of Jews in America) (New York, 1932/1933), pp. 264-90; D. Fridman, in Der hamer (New York) (January 1926); Y. Yeshurin, in Tsukunft (New York) (July 1942); Yidishe kinstler in 19^th un 20tn yorhundert (Jewish artists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) (New York, 1949), see index; Mikhl Likht, Af di randn (At the margins) (Buenos Aires, 1956); Ikuf-almanakh (Almanac of the Jewish Cultural Association) (New York, 1961), p. 556; Jahrbuch der jungen Kunst (Leipzig, 1923), pp. 312-16; Bibliographical Encyclopedia of American Jews (New York, 1935); Who Is Who in American Art (New York, 1936); Die Juden in der Kunst (Vienna-Jerusalem, 1936); Revolution and Tradition in Modern American Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951); The Jewish People, Past and Present, vol. 3: “Jewish Art” (New York, 1955); Jewish Art (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961)

Khayim Leyb Fuks