Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Polia Chentoff artist

Polia Chentoff was born into a Jewish family in Vitebsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus), probably in 1890, first studying art with Yehuda Moiseevich Pen before attending the Royal Academy of Arts in Brussels and working in Munich and Paris. At the outbreak of the First World War she settled in Moscow, where she became a member of the Jewish Society for the Promotion of the Arts and joined the Circle of Jewish National Aesthetics (Shomir). In 1920 Chentoff moved to Berlin, in 1923 to Paris, and from 1930 she lived in London, where she secretly married artist Edmond Kapp in 1932, exhibiting successfully until her sudden death in 1933.

Born: 1890 Vitebsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus)

Died: 1933 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1930

Other name/s: Polina Arkadevna Khentova, Polina Khentova, Pauline Chentoff, Polina Chentova, Polia Chentoff Kapp, Polia Khentoff Kapp, Pauline Chentov, Polya Chentoff, Polya Abramovna Chentova


Biography

Artist Polia Chentoff (née Polina Arkadievna Khentova) was born into a Jewish family in Vitebsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus), in the early 1890s. In her obituary, the Russian painter Sergey Sharshun gave the year 1896, but no official records have confirmed this to date. Chentoff studied at the Vitebsk gymnasium and received her first art lessons in the studio of Yehuda Moiseevich Pen, Marc Chagall’s first teacher and a leading figure in the early-20th-century revival of Russian and Belarusian art.

Chentoff briefly moved with her family to Moscow before settling in Brussels, Belgium, where she entered the Royal Academy of Arts, graduating with distinction. She then worked in Munich and Paris. At the outbreak of the First World War, she returned to Russia, living in the outskirts of Moscow. She became a member of the Jewish Society for the Promotion of the Arts, founded in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) in 1915, with a branch in Moscow the following year. The Society organised exhibitions and competitions, published art-related texts and supported the creation of art schools; she exhibited with the Society in 1917–18. She also showed her paintings in the exhibitions of the modernist art movements Mir Iskusstvo (The World of Art) in 1917 and Moskovskoe Tovarishestvo Khudozhnikov (Moscow Association of Artists) in 1917–1918. She later took an active part in the Circle of Jewish National Aesthetics (Shomir). Founded in 1916, and counting among its members, the art critic and poet Abram Efros, and pioneering avant-garde artist El Lissitzky, its aim was the creation of a new form of contemporary art based on the legacy of a Jewish artistic tradition. Chentoff began a relationship with El Lissitzky and in summer 1918 the couple travelled to Kiev, where they worked in the art session of the Kultur-Lige (Culture League), an organisation founded in 1918 to promote Yiddish secular democratic values. In 1919 Chentoff returned to Vitebsk, where the following year, at the suggestion of Mark Chagall, El Lissitszky was appointed head of the Architecture Department at the Vitebsk Art School.

In 1920 Chentoff immigrated to Berlin, where Lissitzky joined her in 1921. She taught art, illustrated books and painted commissioned portraits. Relocating to Paris in 1923, she supported herself by making dolls and working as a film extra. She exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1926 and 1927 (becoming a member), met British collectors who helped arrange exhibitions in London and Paris, and secured further illustration commissions, including the collectors’ edition of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (Sun Press/Éditions Narcisse, 1929).

In 1930, with the support of the artist Edmond Kapp—whom she would marry in 1932 in Hampstead—Chentoff settled in London. Soon after her arrival, she exhibited several works at the Guillaume-Brandon-Davis Gallery—including Mother, nursing her infant in a grey landscape; Coiffure, a study in grey and gold; and the head, Widow—and held a concurrent show of engravings at the Bloomsbury Gallery. She often signed her paintings ‘P. Ch.’. Her London debut attracted considerable press attention. The Daily Express described her as a ‘young Russian[…] who comes to us from Paris’, noting a recently painted scene of ‘two girls on a seat on the Embankment’ (Daily Express 1930, p. 19). The Yorkshire Post admired her ‘technical capacity’ and still lifes, ‘reminiscent of an old master’, praising Head of a Girl as ‘restrained and harmonious in colour throughout, it has an appeal which is hard to resist’ (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 1930, p. 6). The Times reviewer commended her ‘double sensibility, human and artistic’, highlighting works such as Morning Toilet, depicting a nude girl washing her hands, and calling it ‘a very charming picture, physical type, design and quality of execution all contributing to the same effect of half-awakened womanhood’. He concluded: ‘A sensitive temperament, wistful rather than melancholy, is reflected in all Miss Chentoff’s work […]’ (The Times 1930, p. 8). In 1931 she took part in the Goupil Gallery Salon; P. G. Konody noted ‘a well-composed small bas-relief’ (Konody 1931, p. 12), while Adrian Bury praised her Portrait of a Woman for its ‘rare delicacy of perception and exquisite quality of paint’ (Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 1931, p. 23).

Polia Chentoff died of a brain tumour at the National Hospital, Queen Square, London, England in 1933. Although her work is not currently represented in UK public collections, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, holds an icon of St Nicholas once owned by Chentoff, purchased from Kapp in 1943; in archive papers, Kapp described it as the ‘great treasure’ of his late wife. In 1975 a ‘marvellous painting’ by Chentoff, On the Embankment, featured in the exhibition Hampstead in the Thirties at the Camden Arts Centre (Anthony 1975, p. 72). In 1986 her bas-reliefs were included in the Fine Art Society exhibition Sculpture Between the Wars.

Related books

  • Aleksandr Kantsedikas, 'El Lissitzky Connections with Polina Khentova', in El Lissitzky. The Jewish Period, 1905-1923 (London: Unicorn Publishing, 2017)
  • Yakov Brook, The Circle of Jewish National Aesthetics 'Shomir': From the Artistic Life of Revolutionary Moscow [Кружок еврейской национальной эстетики 'Шомир': Из художественной жизни революционной Москвы], Mark Chagall Museum Bulletin [Бюллетень Музея Марка Шагала], No. 18, 2010, pp. 64–74
  • Russian Jewish Artists and Book design 1919-1928: Berlin as a Showcase of the Old and the New Russia, exhibition catalogue, Portsmouth: Portsmouth University (Nijmegen: LS, 2009)
  • Oleg Leikind, Konstantin Makhrov, and Dmitry Severiukhin, Khudozhniki Russkogo Zarubezh’ya, 1917–1939: Biograficheskii slovar’ [Artists of the Russian Abroad, 1917–1939: Biographical Dictionary] (St Petersburg: Notabene, 1999)
  • Paul Goring, 'Illustration of 'A Sentimental Journey' in the 1920s', The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, Vol. 29, Fall 1996, p. 36
  • Barry Fealdman, 'Art', 'Between the two great conflicts', Jewish Chronicle, 25 July 1986, p. 11
  • Evan Anthony, 'Poor Start (Book Review)' The Spectator, Vol. 234, 18 January 1975, p. 72
  • Anonymous, 'Obituary [Некролог/ Nekrolog]', Vozrozhdenie, No. 2888, 29 April 1933, n.p.
  • 'Drawings by Kapp', Time & Tide, 14 January 1933, p. 13
  • Untitled, The Straits Times, 19 April 1932, p. 20
  • Paul George Konody, 'The Goupil Gallery Salon', The Observer, 25 October 1931, p. 12
  • Adrian Bury, 'Art Notes', Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, 24 October 1931, p. 23
  • 'Paintings by Polia Chentoff at the Brandon Davis Gallery', Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 78, 13 June 1930, p. 830
  • 'Russian Artists', The Times, 9 June 1930, p. 8
  • 'Miss Polia Chentoff', Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 5 June 1930, p. 6
  • 'Contrasts in Art', Evening Standard, 4 June 1930, p. 6
  • Herbert Furst, 'Exhibition of Miss Chentoff’s Works', Apollo, Vol. 12, 1930, p. 77
  • 'Talk of London', Daily Express, 4 June 1930, p. 19
  • Muriel Harris, 'The Autumn Salon', The Scotsman, 5 November 1927, p. 13

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Jewish Society for the Promotion of the Arts (member)
  • Royal Academy of Arts, Brussels (student)
  • Salon d'Automne (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Sculpture Between the Wars, Fine Art Society, London (1986)
  • Hampstead in the Thirties, Camden Arts Centre, London (1975)
  • Goupil Gallery Salon, London (1931)
  • Paintings by Miss Polia Chentoff, Brandon Davies Gallery, London (1930)
  • Salon d'Automne, Paris (1926-27)
  • Mir Iskusstvo (World of Art) Exhibition, Moscow, Russia (1917)
  • Exhibition of the Jewish Society for the Promotion of the Arts, Moscow, Russia (July-August 1918, April 1917)
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Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Polia Chentoff]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Polia Chentoff] in the Ben Uri Library