A portfolio of 30 lithographs by the Ukranian-Jewish artist Issachar Ber Ryback (1897-1935).
The lithographs dating mostly from 1917 and depict scenes of Ryback's hometown in Ukraine before its Jewish community was destroyed in the pogroms of 1917-1920, in which his father was also murdered.
Ryback graduated from the Kiev art school in 1916 and played a key role in the Yiddish avant-garde movement of the Soviet Union, for this reason he moved to Moscow and took part in a Jewish Art show in 1917. Following his father's murder he fled to Germany in 1921, where he settled in Berlin and became a member of the Novembergruppe and was involved in a number of important exhibitions. In 1925 he returned for a short time to Russia, before moving to Paris in 1926. Here he lived at the heart of the city's artistic community and exhibited at the Galerie aux Quatre Chemins (1928) and Galerie L'Art Contemporain (1929). In 1935 he died of tuberculosis at only 38 years of age. Ryback remained best known for his depictions of the Shtetl live, and some say that if it wasn't for his untimely passing he might have been as renowned as his Parisian contemporary Marc Chagall. A lot of Ryback's work was lost during WWII.

First edition. Oblong folio (34 x 49.5 cm); 30 half-tone lithograph plates, lacks the list of plates on the last leaf; publisher's half-cloth boards in blue velvet, illustrated on front and back; boards rubbed, plates in very good condition; two small ownership stamps (one to half-title and one to margins of plate XXXI) scribbled over with a pen; [2], III-XXXI, [1] ll.