Ossip Zadkine — sculptor with roots in the Russian Empire
Ossip Zadkine was a Belarusian-French sculptor born in Vitebsk (Russian Empire) who became one of the leading Cubist sculptors of the 20th century. His monumental bronze The Destroyed City (1953) in Rotterdam — a figure screaming at the sky with a void where its heart should be — is one of the most powerful anti-war sculptures ever created.
Tracing the roots — Vitebsk (Belarus)
Born in Vitebsk in 1890 — the same city as Marc Chagall — Zadkine studied in England and Paris before settling permanently in France. His Vitebsk Jewish origins gave him a shared cultural starting point with Chagall and Soutine, and his mature work carries the emotional intensity and expressionist distortion of that shared Russian-Jewish Belarusian heritage.
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Vitebsk (Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.