Biographies

Adolphe Feder (1887 – 1943) The following information is from the web site of the Higgins Maxwell Gallery in Kentucky. Adolphe Féder was born in Odessa to a family of Jewish merchants. 1905, he joined the Bund, a Jewish workers’ organization which supported the failed 1905 Revolution. Because of Féder’s involvement with this group, he was forced to flee the country. He went to Berlin and studied art there. He went to Geneva, living there 1908-09 and studying at the city’s art academy. 1910, Féder went to Paris where he studied and worked for two years at the Academie Julien and at informally organized art school. He was considered one of the Ecole de Paris artists seen frequently at the Rotonde café in Montparnasse, and in 1912 his works were exhibited at the Salon d’Automne. In 1926 he traveled to Palestine, where he produced a body of works on such themes as young Jewish pioneers, old Jews at prayer, yeshiva students, Yemenites, Arabs and Bedouins. During World War II, he remined in Paris, joined the underground, was betrayed, and died in Auschwitz. Henri Matisse’s