Moisey Gamburd Bessarabian Romanian and Moldavian sculptor. Country: Romania

Biography of Moisei Gamburg

Moisei (or Monya) Efimovich Gamburg was born in 1903 in Kishinev, in the family of the winemaker Haim Gamburg. His parents owned a vineyard near the village of Nimoreni, close to the town of Călărași in present-day Moldova, where they were involved in winemaking. Gamburg studied at the gymnasium and lyceum named after M. Eminescu, and later at the Kishinev Higher School of Fine Arts under the guidance of artist Shneer Kogan and sculptor Alexandru Plămădeală.

In June 1925, Gamburg passed his baccalaureate exam at the Kishinev Boys' Lyceum No. 2 named after M. Eminescu. From 1925 to 1930, he studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts and then returned to Kishinev. He participated in the salons of the Society of Fine Arts of Bessarabia, organized by Shneer Kogan. His first solo exhibition took place in Kishinev in 1934. Until 1940, he was known as Max Gamburg and mainly lived in Bucharest.

During the Great Patriotic War, Gamburg served in the active army. In 1943, he was transferred to Moscow and engaged in work for the evacuated government of the Moldavian SSR. It was during this time that he started working on the monumental painting "The Curse," dedicated to the tragedy of wartime (currently housed in the National Art Museum of the Republic of Moldova). The artist's parents were killed by Romanian occupiers in Moldova.

After returning from Moscow in 1944, Gamburg restored and became the head of the Union of Artists of Moldova in Kishinev, which at that time consisted of only three artists. He taught at the Kishinev Art School. On July 14, 1954, a few days after his solo exhibition in Kishinev and being one of the most influential artists in the republic, Gamburg unexpectedly took his own life.

In the 1990s and 2000s, several personal exhibitions of Gamburg's works were organized in Moldova, including the one dedicated to the centenary of his birth in 2003. This exhibition also showcased works by his wife, artist Evgenia Yakovlevna Gamburg (nee Goldenberg, January 28, 1913 – March 26, 1956), who created costume designs for Sergei Parajanov's first film "Andriesh."

Since 1999, the Moisei Gamburg Prize in the field of visual arts has been awarded annually by the Academy of Arts of the Republic of Moldova. The prize laureates include graphic artist Isai Kyrmu (1999), artists Ghenadie Tyțuc (2000), Valentin Vyrtosu (2002), and Nicolae Coțofan (2004), as well as art historian Ludmila Anatolievna Toma (2004). Gamburg's works are mainly preserved in the National Art Museum of the Republic of Moldova. His daughter, Miriam Gamburg (born 1947, Kishinev), is an Israeli sculptor and graphic artist. She graduated from the Monumental Art Department of the Leningrad Higher Industrial Art School named after V.I. Mukhina (1970) and has been living in Israel since 1977.