Mr. Band pointed out that it was evident that there are Jewish artists who are capable of developing the artistic tradition the Jewish people have thus far lacked. These men have the Jewish temperament and the Jewish outlook on life, which they express on their canvasses.
As a ten-year-old child in his native town of Neustadt-Schwer-in Band was the only child who would make sketches in his schoolbooks. But in 1926, then he returned to his place of birth, the Jewish mothers were all proud when they showed him the pictures drawn by their children. This, he maintains, is another proof of the fact that there is, not a renaissance, but a real birth of Jewish art, developing throughout the world.
“If the Jewish artists of today take no great part in the ultramodernist movement,” the artist said, “it is because we have no classicism to destroy. We have no artistic revolution among the Jews, because there is nothing to revolt against. A people that has expressed itself for twenty centunes in ethical and religious thought should have something of great importance to do with the old, great ideas in this new former.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.