Portrait of poet Shabse Perl drawn by Alexander Bercovitch.
Photo Credit : Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives
Portrait of A. L. Kaplansky by Alexander Bercovitch. Undated.
Photo Credit : Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives
Alexandre Bercovitch, ca. 1940s.
Photo Credit : Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives
Portrait of Alexandre Berkovitch painted by Moe Reinblatt
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library Art Collection
1891 - 1951
Alexander Bercovitch
Alexander Bercovitch was a founding member of the Eastern Group of Painters and arguably the father of modern Jewish painting in Montreal.
Bercovitch was born in a small port city near Odessa, in present-day Ukraine, to a family that was poor even by shtetl standards. After being given his first paints by a community of Ukrainian monks he had been spying on through metal gates for years, he quickly developed a talent for the art form. Indeed, by the time he was 15, he had established a local reputation, and was creating theatre sets and costumes. He spent three years studying at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Art School, and later in Munich and St. Petersburg.
He deserted the Tsarist army shortly after being drafted during the First World War, and went into hiding until the Revolution of 1917. Bercovitch lived for several years in Turkmenistan, continually painting, until he ran afoul of the Communist authorities and relocated with his family to Montreal in 1926.There, Bercovitch and his wife, Bryna Avrutick, who had been a revolutionary back in Russia, maintained their radical politics, naming two of their children Ninel (Lenin spelled backwards) and Sacvan (for the executed Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti) – who would later become a well-known American literary critic. Their first child, Sylvia Ary, became a well-known artist in her own right.
Life in the immigrant Plateau neighbourhood was difficult for the impoverished Bercovitches during the 1920s and 30s. Bercovitch left his family shortly after arriving, rejoining them six months later. When he left them for good in 1942, Sacvan was placed in foster care. Upon first arriving in Montreal, Bercovitch had earned money doing ceiling work for local churches and synagogues. He also occasionally exhibited his own work from his years in Turkmenistan, alongside Montreal-themed canvases.
He joined a roving band of artists called the Eastern Group of Painters, which countered the explicit Canadian nationalism of the more famous Group of Seven and its successor, the Canadian Group of Painters. Bercovitch was a teacher, mentor and harsh critic of the younger generation of Montreal Jewish painters, including Sam Borenstein, Moe Reinblatt and Rita Briansky. He was famous as much for his classic Canadian paintings, like Laurentian Snow Scene (1938) and Gaspe: Cliff and Sea (1940), as he was for more Montreal- and Jewish-centered works such as the classic Laurier (1933), which he painted from his own balcony.
On January 7, 1951, Bercovitch collapsed of a heart attack while waiting for a streetcar at the corner of Mont-Royal and St. Laurent. He was en route to his first exhibition in 10 years.
