Bat Yam Museum is home to two rare and valuable collections: the world’s largest collection of artworks by the renowned Jewish painter Issachar Ber Ryback and the collection of artworks, Judaica, and books of Sholem Asch – one of the greatest Yiddish novelists of the 20th century.
Asch Collection
Upon settling in Bat Yam in 1955, Sholem and Matilda Asch brought with them a collection of exceptional artworks that they displayed on the walls of their home. Along with the artworks, their home was also filled with rare Judaica artifacts and thousands of nonfiction, history, philosophy, and Jewish holy books.
In the study, bedroom, and living room, you can now see original drawings by Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, and Amedeo Modigliani, an oil painting by Maurycy Gottlieb, a portrait of a woman by Moïse Kisling, works by Isaac Levitan, a series of oil portraits by Sidney Gelfand and more. Asch’s rare menorah collection, which is also displayed in the house, includes Italian menorahs and German pewter menorahs.
The Asch collection also comprises the novelist’s private library, which holds no less than 1000 books that Sholem Asch collected throughout his life. These include history, philosophy, Jewish thought and Kabbalah, art, and fiction books.
Sholem Asch House also preserves part of the private and valuable archive of the great Jewish novelist. Our archive holds some of Sholem Asch’s original manuscripts, handwritten notebooks and notes, as well as letters and postcards he sent or received.
These days, the archive is undergoing a process of digitization, and soon we will launch an online archive that gives remote access to the diverse materials kept in it.
Send us an email to schedule your visit to the Sholem Asch Archive
Ryback Collection
Bat Yam Museum of Art holds the main and most comprehensive collection of artworks created by Issachar Ber Ryback, one of the greatest Jewish painters of the 20th century. The collection was donated to the museum in the 1950s by his widow, Sonia Ryback after she moved to the city at the invitation of Bat Yam’s first mayor, David Ben Ari. Her home was built next to the art museum, at the heart of the Ramat Yosef neighborhood. After the artist’s wife’s death, in the wake of complex processes that took place in Bat Yam in the 1970s, the collection was forgotten and Ryback’s most important works have not been on public view or studied for the last 50 years.
The reintroduction of Ryback’s art to the general public and scholars is one of our main goals for the coming years. Since 2020, the collection has undergone extensive restoration and it is now open for visits of scholars who wish to research Ryback’s art. Soon, Ryback House will also reprise its function as a museum that displays the world’s largest permanent exhibition of Ryback’s artworks.
The museum’s collection includes three central bodies of work, distinct from one another by the countries in which Ryback lived while creating them: the Ukrainian years (1916–1921), in which he created the exceptional drawing series Shtetl, My Destroyed Home, A Recollection (1917), and architectural oil paintings documenting the houses of the shtetl, mostly synagogues, and cemeteries. The Berlin years (1921–1924) in which he created large cubist oil paintings, considered his masterworks. The significance and distinction of these paintings lie in Ryback’s integration of avant-garde forms with traditional Jewish contents – figures and ritual objects. And finally, the Paris years (1926–1935), with a series of oil paintings that demonstrates his stylistic shift after he joined the École de Paris (“School of Paris”). In these works, Ryback continued to explore Jewish subject matters, while depicting shtetl life, despite his growing distance from it, with a particular focus on the Jewish wedding ceremony.
Send us an email to schedule your visit to the Ryback Collection