Jewish Painters of Montreal

Jewish Painters of Montreal refers to a group of artists who depicted the social realism of Montreal during the 1930s and 40s. First used by the media to describe participants of the annual YMHA-YWHA art exhibition, the term was popularized in the 1980s as the artists were exhibited collectively in public galleries across Canada. In 2009 the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec organized a touring exhibition, Jewish Painters of Montreal: A Witness to Their Time, 1930–1948, which renewed interest in the group in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

This collective included multiple generations of painters: established artists Jack Beder (1910–1987), Alexander Bercovitch (1891–1951), Eric Goldberg (1890–1959), Louis Muhlstock (1904–2001); mid-career artists Sam Borenstein (1908–1969), Herman Heimlich (1904–1986), Harry Mayerovitch (1910–2004), Bernard Mayman (1885–1966), Ernst Neumann (1907–1956), Fanny Wiselberg (1906–1986); and then-emerging artists Sylvia Ary (1923–2011), Rita Briansky (1925–2025), Ghitta Caiserman-Roth (1923–2005), Alfred Pinsky (1921–1999), and Moe Reinblatt (1917–1979).^: 28 As a group during the 1930s and 40s, they were united in their choice of subjects — the human figure, Montreal and its people, and the War. As individual artists, their style varied from socialist realism to stylized expressionism.