On August 31, 2014, an event will take place in the Museum of Odesa Modern Art, which will go down in the history of Odesa. The exhibition “They’re back!” opens at the MoOMA, where the legendary collection of works by members of the “Society of Independents” will be exhibited.

This Society united artists of the Odesa avant-garde of the beginning of the 20th century: Mykhailo Gershenfeld, Amshey Nurenberg, Isaac Malik, Theophilus Fryerman, Sigismund Olesevich, Israel Meksin, Sandro Fazzini and many others. The new generation, brought up in classical traditions by Kyriak Kostandi and his associates in the Society of South Russian Artists, picked up everything new during their studies and creativity in Paris and Munich, rushed forward following the Time of radical changes in art.

The “Society of Independents” was formed and largely existed with the support of Yakov Peremen, a rabbi and public figure, philanthropist and scientist, one of the first Zionists.

Exported to Palestine in 1919, the collection of 220 works of young avant-garde artists was saved from total destruction by J. Peremen. A change from the all-destructive “cultural construction” of the Bolsheviks. However, in Palestine, and then in Israel, the works of the Odesans were not in demand to the extent necessary.

For a long time in Odesa, the works of the members of the Society of Independents were considered lost. Only legends were preserved about their authors, since practically all of them were destroyed or crushed by the ruthless XX century without the right to engage in creativity.

And only at the beginning of the 21st century, thanks to the art critics of Israel and Odesa, it was possible to change the situation: most of the exported works were found, and described in articles and catalogs, and in 2006, the exhibition “Odesa Parisians” was held in Israel.