The People's Painter Flashcards
His name Gittel’s hands molding sturdy plates from slippery clay
The People’s Painter
Then - he couldn’t stop himself - he sketched in the margins!
The People’s Painter
But paper was a luxury in the shtetl, and there was none to spare
The People’s Painter
That’s not right!
The People’s Painter
After a classmate pulled a prank, the teacher kept everyone indoors, demanding the culprits’s name
The People’s Painter
I’m not going to tell who did it
The People’s Painter
Refusing to tattle, he walked out.
The People’s Painter
He was only four when Czar Nicholas II’s soldiers hurled rocks through his window and dragged his father away.
The People’s Painter
Just because Tate had been demanding fair pay for working people, he was banished to frigid, far-off Siberia
The People’s Painter
But, feeling his father’s boldness inside himself, he marched up to the sentry at the end of the street and shouted, “Down with the Czar!”
The People’s Painter
He wrote to Gittel: Come.
The People’s Painter
But Zayde could not leave the shtetl, the only home he knew.
The People’s Painter
He wailed.
The People’s Painter
America bewildered the new immigrant
The People’s Painter
Trains overhead and underground
The People’s Painter
A cramped two-room tenement apartment for the whole family.
The People’s Painter
A chair that rocked and nearly dumped him over backwards - not at all like Tate’s.
The People’s Painter
Tomatoes - ick!
The People’s Painter
All different from Hebrew.
The People’s Painter
Even worse, bullies tormented him about his clothes and accent, and they called him names just because he was Jewish.
The People’s Painter
Sometimes, though, they’d pause if he chalked their portraits on the sidewalk
The People’s Painter
See his craving to draw, a teacher gave him watercolors.
The People’s Painter
Another paid him to pen calligraphy - elegantly curving letters, all in English.
The People’s Painter
TEACH THY TONGUE TO SAY I DO NOT KNOW AND THOU SHALT…
The People’s Painter
To do that, he’d need to finish high school: go to college; learn about colors, lines, anatomy.
The People’s Painter
He argued bitterly.
The People’s Painter
HOT DOGS
The People’s Painter
NEW YORK
The People’s Painter
So he apprenticed to a lithographer, who hand-lettered signs for billboards and chiseled them into stone storefronts.
The People’s PAinter
He spend months on a, tracing and carving every curl and curve.
The People’s PAinter
The, he moved to b.
The People’s Painter
Gradually, he fell in love with these letters, too.
The People’s PAinter
After five years, he mastered the craft, and his signs began to appear around the city.
The People’s Painter
But there was a problem.
The People’s Painter
Purple-shadowed valleys, misty haystacks, fields of cows.
The People’s Painter
And he detested cows!
The People’s Painter
I like stories and people, he explained.
The People’s Painter
His teachers, though, insisted that painting weren’t supposed to tell stories.
The People’s Painter
That pictures should be beautiful - not real life.
The People’s Painter
Maybe he should only make signs
The People’s Painter
Nearly thirty years old now, confused and discouraged, he quit school, stopped painting, and sailed to Europe, then on to North Africa.
The People’s PAinter
In museums, he gazed at centuries of pictures.
The People’s Painter
This may be art but is it my own art? he pondered.
The People’s Painter
The judge and jury decided they must be guilty, since they were poor immigrants and anarchists who opposed any kind of government.
The People’s Painter
He returned home and told their tail in twenty-three pictures - even though his teachers had insisted that he must not tell stories.
The People’s Painter
And people flocked to see them, even if they weren’t pretty.
The People’s PAinter
It was the Great Depression, and jobs were scarce.
The People’s Painter
So was food.
The People’s PAinter
Young cotton pickers in Arkansas.
The People’s Painter
Impoverished families in Mississippi
The People’s Painter
Manual laborers in Louisiana
The People’s Painter
Child coal miners in Pennsylvania.
The People’s Painter
They urged politicians to pass laws to make sure workers got jobs, families were fed, and children could go to school
The People’s PAinter
Their children walked by the mural at school every day.
The People’s Painter
Instead, he shed light on Americans who lived in the shadows.
The People’s Painter
They questioned him relentlessly.
The People’s Painter
Why do you support workers?
The People’s PAinter
Immigrants?
The People’s Painter
Civil rights?
The People’s PAinter
Isn’t America fine the way it is?
The People’s Painter
Which of your friends are enemies of America?
The People’s Painter
I hate injustice, he had declared.
The People’s Painter
Civil rights activists.
The People’s Painter
Workers demanding fair pay.
The People’s Painter
Political protesters.
The People’s Painter
Advocates for peace.
The People’s Painter
Especially in the margins.
The People’s Painter
