At the age of five, Maurycy Minkowski suffered an accident that left him deaf and unable to speak for the rest of his life. This may explain his focus on themes of solitude and dislocation, as well as the isolation of the figures in this work, even as they share a common fate and situation. Following the failed Russian revolution of 1905, pogroms erupted in Bialystok and Siedlce. After personally witnessing these pogroms, Minkowski created this searing depiction of a Jewish family uprooted from their home, poignantly transmitting their exhaustion and despair as they stop to rest.
		Maurycy Minkowski (Polish, 1881-1930) After the Pogrom, 1905 Oil on canvas Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv; Gift of Zagaysky, Warsaw, ca. 1936-7