Isaac Lichtenstein was born into a Jewish family in Łódź, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire (now Poland) in 1887, working in Paris in the early 1900s as part of the École de Paris group. Lichtenstein spent some time in London at the beginning of the First World War, becoming a founder member of the Ben Uri Arts Society. Postwar Lichtenstein made several additional visits to Britain, designing Ben Uri's second logo and giving a talk at the Society in 1920, as well as exhibiting in Manchester and London.
Painter Isaac Lichtenstein was born into a Jewish family in Łódź, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire (now Poland) in 1887. As a young man, he travelled widely, notably to Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, where he was among the loose group of émigré artists, mainly of Jewish descent, living and working together at the collection of La Ruche (The Beehive) studios in Montparnasse, known as the École de Paris. Together with fellow artists Pinchus Krémègne, Henri Epstein, Leo Koenig, Marek Schwarz and Leon Indenbaum, Lichtenstein co-founded the publication, Machmadim (Precious Ones), a textless journal of Jewish art that was first published in Paris in 1912.
Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, Lichtenstein arrived in London together with Lazar Berson, who in 1915 founded Ben Uri, with Lichtenstein as a founder member. He is thought to have lived in America for much of the war, volunteering in 1918 to join the Jewish Legion and serving in Palestine. During the 1920s Lichtenstein briefly returned to London once more, where he was in contact with Ben Uri, designing its second logo (after Berson departed suddenly in 1916), and giving a talk at the Society in 1920. In 1924 he held an exhibition at 33 Blackfriars Street, Manchester, where he showed pictures of Palestinian subjects and drawings in monochrome, mostly of groups of figures in interiors in Jerusalem, described in The Manchester Guardian as 'directly handled, good in design, and marked by a sympathy and interest that make them alive'. In 1927 his work was included in the important exhibition of Jewish art and antiquities at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. In 1931 an exhibition of his paintings and drypoint etchings was held at the Ben Uri Jewish Art and Literary Society at 63 Mansell Street in London. The same year, another exhibition was held at Parsons Galleries, Oxford Street. Afterwards, Lichtenstein moved between London, Poland, Paris and the United States, where he spent most of his life, reviving the Machmadim Publishing House devoted to the production of artistic Yiddish books. His work was included in numerous group exhibitions at Ben Uri including the Opening of the Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery and an Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists at Woburn House in 1934, an ‘Exhibition of Jewish Art’, arranged by the Ben Uri Art Gallery at the North Western Reform Synagogue in 1948, and a selection of works from the Ben Uri at the Russell-Cotes Gallery, Bournemouth in 1970. Isaac Lichtenstein died in New York in 1981.
Isaac Lichtenstein in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Isaac Lichtenstein]
Publications related to [Isaac Lichtenstein] in the Ben Uri Library