The Twin Brothers Who Painted & Perished as One

efraim i menasze seidenbeutel portret_6915950.jpg, small, Efraim & Menashe Seidenbeutel, source: Wikipedia / CC

Inseparable in life and art, they were also inseparable in death. Twin brothers Efraim and Menashe Seidenbeutel died 75 years ago, a few days before the end of WWII.

Comparing their biographies in the Polish Biographical Dictionary or the two brothers' own hand-written CVs – copies of which survived in the archives of Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw – seems like a game of spotting differences. Their lives seem identical up to the tiniest details – just like their physical appearance, which during their lifetime brought about a whole streak of comic cases of mistaken identity, generously feeding anecdote and legend. Physical aspect aside, the Seidenbeutels shared a unique emotional bond, which allowed them to feel, think and even create paintings together. That is, literally 'together'.

Sashe & Menashe

Efraim & Menashe Seidenbeutel (above the portrait) with other painters at the 1st Warsaw School Exhibition at Zachęta, photo: Archive of Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw

Efraim and Menashe Seidenbeutels were born on 6th June 1902 into a poor Jewish family in Warsaw. Their father was a book-keeper who ran a textile business in Warsaw, and the twins had six siblings. Their older brother Józef, who also pursued a painting career, introduced the twins to art, but died of TB in 1923 – the same year Menashe was admitted to the Fine Arts School in Warsaw.

Story has it that during the first year of their studies, the brothers took turns in attending classes, so that they would pay only one student fee. When the truth finally came out, the rector of the school decided that the twins would continue studying with only one fee. At school, their friends called them Sashe and Menashe.

The pair not only looked the same, but they also dressed the same. This however, as Tadeusz Wittlin recounted, was not caused by their willingness to confuse others, but rather because, 'they just had the same taste':

He always dresses the same: blue sport jacket, white shirt, crimson tie with a thick knot, grey flannel pants like pipes, brown Derby shoes that would never get a clean-up, and a light grey hat with a greasy black ribbon, tilted to the back.

Which brother is portrayed in this fragment? It doesn't matter. Wittlin used singular here because he would use the same depiction in the next paragraph – when he was writing about the other brother. He himself never knew which of the Seidenbeutels he was talking to.

In Kazimierz Dolny, where they attended annual arts fairs, one of their showpieces at the annual artists' ball included a farcical classic in which one of the twins would disappear in the box only to pop up from another side of the stage. Another famous anecdote features the two brothers going to a hairdresser and paying only for one cut... Undoubtedly, they had a remarkable sense of humor.

My brother will come do the nose

Efraim & Menashe (right) with their colleague painters at the 2nd Warsaw School Exhibition in Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, 1931, photo: Archive of Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw

However what connected the brothers most strongly was their unique emotional bond, which is also reflected in their painting. In fact, after 1933 – which marks the mature period of their art – most of their works were painted together and signed simply 'Seidenbeutel'. How did this look in practice? Monika Żeromska, who was a friend from school, and one-time model, remembered:

They would approach and back away from the easel in turns which was very tiresome for the model – seeing this four-legged painter-creature from the corner of your eye. Or one of them would come, paint for a while, then suddenly put down the paintbrush and the palette, and say: ‘My brother will come do the nose,’ and leave.

Selected works by Efraim & Menashe Seidenbeutel – Image Gallery

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But even their works created separately have an almost identical style, they share the same sense of colour and form. Critics familiar with their works were always at odds about the authorship. The opinio communis has it that Menashe had a stronger personality, and his paintings were therefore more expressive – he also won more awards than his brother and his oeuvre counts more paintings.

In art, the Seidenbeutels were influenced by the concept of 'moderate realism' propagated by their teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts Tadeusz Pruszkowski, a style which relied heavily on past tradition and which had a distinctly anti-avantgardist edge. The brothers painted in the Post Impressionist style of the École de Paris, mostly landscapes and still life scenes, but also portraits. For most critics, the distinctive quality of the Seidenbeutels’ paintings was the brothers' sharpened sense of colour.

Unlike their older brother Józef, who was interested in creating a Jewish national style in art, Sashe and Menashe shunned Jewish motifs. Even their paintings from Kazimierz Dolny – this Polish Barbizon and a town crowded with traditional Jewish life – show no traces of Jewish culture.

'Widok na Kazimierz nad Wisłą' (View of Kazimierz by the Vistula) by Menasze Seidenbeutel, oil on canvas, photo: Jewish Historical Institute — 'Widok na Kazimierz nad Wisłą' (View of Kazimierz by the Vistula) by Menashe Seidenbeutel, oil on canvas, photo: Jewish Historical Institute

The Holocaust

After the war broke out, the Seidenbeutels fled to Lviv where they found shelter at their colleague Maria Obrębska-Stieber’s dwelling. It was here that Menashe produced his last known painting, Martwa Natura z Zieloną Butelką (Still Life with a Green Bottle). In 1940, the brothers stayed in Moscow for a while – a little later, they found themselves in the Białystok Ghetto.

It has been suggested that during this period the Seidenbeutels belonged to a group of artists working in a painters’ atelier set up by a German entrepreneur, Oskar Steffen. Here, in what once was a carpenter’s shop in Kupiecka Street, the painters were forced to copy reproductions of paintings by old masters: Rubenses, Titians, Murillos and the like.

Thumbnail — Efraim & Menashe Seidenbeutel, https://sztetl.org.pl

Isaac Celnikier, who was 16 at the time and served in the studio as an assistant, remembered that every couple of days German trucks arrived at this 'Manufacture of Titians' and transported the paintings to the palace in Dojlidy, were the headquarters of the Białystok Bezirk was located. From there the paintings were taken to Germany, where they were sold.

Since the Germans did not consider this occupation physically strenuous, the painters received neither money nor additional food rations.

In November 1943, after the liquidation of the Białystok Ghetto, the Seidenbeutels were deported to the Stutthof concentration camp, and later to KL Flossenbürg. According to Isaac Celnikier, who was a witness to their deaths, the Seidenbeutels were murdered when the guard started beating one of the brothers, and the other came to his rescue – they were then beaten to death with rifle butts by the guards. It happened during the liquidation of the camp in April 1945, only days before the liberation of the camp and the end of WWII.

Author: Mikołaj Gliński, 30 April 2015. The photographs in the article come from Joanna Pollakówna's book 'There Were Two Brothers - Painters' (Warsaw 2009).

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