Janet Sobel 1983-1968

Born Yevhenia Olechovska in Katerynoslav, near Dnipro, Ukraine, she moved to New York with her mother and siblings shortly after her father’s death during a Russian Army pogrom in 1905. In her late teens, she married Max Sobel, with whom she had five children. Janet Sobel took up painting in her late forties, about 1937 or 1938. As a predominantly self-taught artist, Sobel was inspired by the folk art of her homeland, including traditional costumes and ornate craft objects. Her unique style combined the traditional with the modern, resulting in a powerful expression of her cultural identity. A significant aspect of Sobel’s early drawings is her synthesis of Ukrainian iconography and images of war. She juxtaposed the familiar and the unfamiliar, crafting a compelling visual statement on the global war. By incorporating both American and Ukrainian figures in her depictions of soldiers and wartime chaos, Sobel simultaneously evoked a sense of nostalgia for her cultural heritage and addressed the turmoil caused by the horror of war, particularly the themes of suffering, sacrifice, and loss. Sobel continued to create and exhibit her art until health issues, including allergies to paint materials, forced her to stop working in the late 1940s. Despite withdrawing from the art world, her influence endured, and her work was later recognized as a precursor to Abstract Expressionism. She died in 1968 in Plainfield, New Jersey. Her death marked the quiet close of a life that had bridged continents and cultures. One that began in the tragedy of displacement and war but culminated in a legacy of artistic innovation and cross-cultural expression.