Lasar Segall — painter with roots in the Russian Empire
Lasar Segall was a Lithuanian-born Brazilian painter who became a central figure of Brazilian modernism and Expressionism. Born in Vilnius (then Russian Empire), he studied in Germany before settling in Brazil in 1923, where he spent the rest of his life depicting immigrants, the poor, and the marginalised with extraordinary empathy.
Tracing the roots — Vilnius
Born in Vilnius (Russian Empire, now Lithuania) in 1891 to a Jewish family, Segall studied in Berlin and Dresden and was profoundly shaped by German Expressionism before emigrating to Brazil. His subjects — immigrants on ships, Jewish refugees, Brazilian favela residents — reflect a lifelong empathy with the displaced that flowed directly from his own experience of the Russian Empire's Pale of Settlement.
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Vilnius. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.