Our museum continues the ‘Cheers!’ project, which was launched last year and is dedicated to artists whose jubilees are kept in our collection. The KhRAM collection is a unique and integral part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage. Its research, preservation and promotion is our strategically important mission, especially in times of war for our freedom and identity.
Hoskel Sandler was orphaned at the age of nine. On 15 February 1919, during the bloody Proskuriv Jewish pogrom, his parents and two sisters were killed. Four children of the family survived, but were wounded. After treatment, the future artist was brought up in an orphanage in Proskuriv. His childhood was difficult, but later Sandler fondly recalled the head of the orphanage who took notice of the talented boy. Only the man’s surname is known – Cheretianko. It was he who, in the incredibly difficult conditions of the war, arranged for Hoskel’s transfer to an orphanage in Kharkiv, where an artistic group was operating.
In 1935, while already studying in Moscow, Sandler was sent by the Central Committee of the Komsomol to Komsomolsk-on-Amur to collect creative materials about the construction of a new city. It was a common propaganda practice in the Soviet Union to send artists and cultural figures to socialist construction sites. At that time, the artist wrote about himself: ‘It is a pity that painting is only colour and line. Sometimes I want to sing and shout. There are few means to convey the tumultuous life that the Komsomol members lived in the struggle to build Komsomolsk.’ So he enthusiastically captured the turbulent waves of the Amur, construction in minus 30-40 degree temperatures, the first house, the first street, and painted portraits, including the first Nanaimo builder. Sandler recalls his emotional state: ‘I have to work hard to make my works worthy of my hometown of youth, Komsomolsk. I will work hard!’ It is not known for certain whether the artist actually felt, thought and spoke this way, because there is little information about his life and work, and it dates back to the years of the USSR, when censorship and the method of socialist realism reigned supreme.
The artist worked mainly in a realistic manner, although his works of certain periods are characterised by impressionistic etude incompleteness and decorativism, which is typical for the 1960s. Sandler demonstrates a high painting culture, masterful drawing and skilful use of the colour palette. The artist’s landscapes, still lifes, and portraits are compositional and lyrical in sound. Throughout his life, Hoskel Sandler was actively creative, even in the short respites between battles during the Second World War.

REFERENCES:
Hoskel Moiseevych Sandler was born on 18.02.1910 in Proskuriv (from 1954 – in Khmelnytskyi); died on 29.04.1983 in Moscow. Painter, graphic artist (drawing, etching).
1927 – 1930 – studied at the Kyiv Art College.
1930 – 1934 – worked as a graphic artist in Kharkiv publishing houses.
1935 – 1937 – studied at the Institute of Improvement at the Committee for the Arts in Moscow. Teachers: V. Baksheiev, B. Yohanson, N. Chernyshov.
Since 1938 – participation in exhibitions.
Since 1939, he lived and worked in Moscow and the Moscow region.
During the Second World War, he was an infantry platoon commander, fought from Chisinau to Berlin, received combat awards, participated in the organisation of an art exhibition in Germany dedicated to the events of the war (1946).
Since 1957 – a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR.
1964 – 1966 – initiator of the creation of the art museum in Komsomolsk-on-Amur (Russia).
In the funds of the KhRAM there are 23 paintings by the artist.

His wife – Sofia Semenivna Vitukhnovska (1912-2000), an artist and graphic artist.

Granddaughter – Alina Vitukhnovska (b. 1973, Moscow) – a poet, writer, public figure, human rights activist, opposition politician; winner of the 2010 Nonconformism Prize in the Nonconformism-Fate nomination (based on the totality of her merits) with the wording ‘For fearlessness and firmness in defending her ideas’; in March 2014, after the annexation of the Crimea, together with a number of prominent Russian scientists and cultural figures, she expressed her disagreement with the actions of the Russian authorities in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine, signed the anti-war appeal of the initiative group to hold the Congress of Intellectuals ‘Against the war, against Russia’s self-isolation, against the restoration of totalitarianism’; included by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the list of foreign agents as a member of the women’s social and political movement ‘Soft Power’.