Upheaval

Yefim Ladyzhensky, We Were Wrapping Candies, Date Unknown, Collection of Yevgeny Kalinsky.

Ladyzhensky recalls wrapping “Slivochnye pomadki” (creamy fudge) and “Rakovye sheyki” (crayfish necks) for his industrious neighbor, Madam Styro: “After handing in fifty wrapped sweets, we would receive one unwrapped sweet for ourselves. Such was the price that the old exploiter paid for free labor from children.”

Yefim Ladyzhensky, Petliura’s Gang has Come to Town I, Date Unknown, Collection of David Birnbaum.

In this diptych, Ladyzhensky recalls a violent pogrom from two perspectives. In the first panel, women, children, and elders sit inside of a small, barricaded apartment.

Yefim Ladyzhensky, In Self-Defense of My Home (Petliura’s Gang has Come to Town II), Date Unknown, Collection of David Birnbaum.

In the second panel of this diptych, men move barricades into place outside.

Yefim Ladyzhensky, Who Will Win? , Date Unknown, Collection of David Birnbaum.

A soldier stands in the center of a crowd, pointing toward a large map of the Iberian Peninsula. The map indicates soldiers’ positions around Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.

Yefim Ladyzhensky, A Hold Up at Night, Date Unknown, Collection of David Birnbaum.

Like the writer Isaac Babel, Ladyzhensky immortalized the Jewish gangsters of Odessa. As with his depictions of pogroms and catastrophes, he alludes to, but does not directly depict, the violence in this scene.