The Fine Art of [Todros Geller] // 12.29.2023

Old world / new world. Religious / secular. Despair / hope. Todros Geller, who many consider the “dean of Chicago Jewish artists,” lived and created in the forward-dashes of these binaries. His painting “Strange Worlds” is one of the clearest examples of this: an older, disillusioned man (whose face resembles the Eastern European Jews Geller included in many of his works) stands with his back turned to the quick clip of modernity behind him, the bold, slashing diagonal of the El’s steel beams making physical the separation and otherness he feels internally. But the pairing of Geller’s 1940 woodcut “God’s Shadows” and his 1942 painting “Street Scene with Man” offers another study in contrasts and comparisons, like the subtle version of playing a “spot the differences” game in a children’s magazine.

One thing that remains the same? The group of buildings, near-identical in both compositions. They resemble the types of homes one might’ve found around Maxwell Street at the turn of the century. Geller taught for a time at the nearby Hull House after arriving in Chicago in 1918, so he would’ve been well familiar with the area, an ever-shifting amalgamation of immigrant and migrant communities (Greeks, Italians, Eastern European Jews, African-Americans, and so on). Also true for both “God’s Shadows” and “Street Scene with Man”: bare trees, ground blanketed in white, laundry fluttering in the wind, a solitary figure on the street, no clear place to which he belongs. 

“God’s Shadows” comes from Geller’s time in the WPA. Featured in the 1942 “Artists for Victory” show at the Met, it foregrounds a homeless man on his side, twisted into an uncomfortable sleep, his hands resting on a wooden crutch. But what to make of the title? “Tzel,” the Hebrew word for “shadow,” can also be translated metaphorically as “protection”—God’s presence in the Tanakh is likened to a shadow that provides shelter from sun and storms. Yet in this woodcut we witness a man surrounded by homes with no cover from the elements. Is the title ironic, a knock at the lack of a safety net provided by religion, government, fellow people throughout the Depression?

In “Street Scene with Man,” hope grows in quiet corners. It may not be the same person in the same narrative as “God’s Shadows,” but it could easily be read this way. The buildings that in “God’s Shadows” were in ramshackle disrepair here are mended. The snow is starting to melt, and the lone figure is standing, dragging (with some effort) a stack of firewood behind him. His destination is uncertain, but the fact that he has one is not. Beside the group of homes grow two trees. One is barren, blanketed in snow. The other has a few leaves tentatively sprouting, still a ways away from the green of a new season. Geller sometimes included a sapling in his works, a symbol of potential, of hope.

One of Geller’s lifelong concerns: What is Jewish art, and the place of Jewish culture in America? What does it look like to build anew and to preserve what came before? In “Street Scene with Man,” the journey to belonging, to abundance, appears to be a long one for both the man and the tree. But perhaps, this scene seems to say, it’s not impossible. We can plant, and grow, and take that growth to turn it into something for ourselves, for the ones around us. It just takes intention. It just takes time. 

To inquire about this work, head here.