Bust of Rubin

This angular, masklike portrait bust of the Romanian-born painter Reuven Rubin reflects Chana Orloff’s interest—shared by many of her fellow early twentieth-century European modernists—in the reductive and abstracted representational forms characteristic of some African and other non-European or ancient arts.

Orloff’s family immigrated to Palestine in 1905 to escape widespread persecution of Jews in Ukraine. Displaying remarkable independence for the era, she relocated by herself to Paris in 1910 to become a dressmaker and was employed by the haute couture house Paquin. She soon began studying art and by 1912 was able to support herself through sculpture, working alongside artist friends and fellow Jewish immigrants including Chaim Soutine, Marc Chagall, and Ossip Zadkine.