Depicting Kazimierz’s Jewish Ghetto: Artur Markowicz and Fin-de-Siècle Polish–Jewish Modernism

On 11 March 1899, a group of young Jewish artists organized a commemorative evening in memory of the late Maurycy Gottlieb, an event accompanied by the publication of the festive Jednodniówka, which included contributions by Jewish and Polish modernist artists and writers. Artur Markowicz was among them. This article examines the fin-de-siècle renaissance of Jewish modernist visual culture and its exploration of traditional Eastern European Jewish life, focusing on Markowicz’s depictions of the Kazimierz ghetto. In contrast to the more critical attitude of Samuel Hirszenberg, the leader of Kraków’s short-lived circle of Jewish artists and art lovers in the early twentieth century, Markowicz’s Impressionist and Symbolist pastels reflected a more idealized approach within Jewish modernism. Nonetheless, his works, largely unchanged by subsequent upheavals, later evoked nostalgia for a lost world.