The Rabbi
Erno Erb was born in 1878 into a family of assimilated Lviv Jews in Lemberg, Austria. He spent almost all his life in Lviv and Truskavets, painting urban motifs and genre scenes, populated with Ukrainian peasants and orthodox Jews, as well as landscapes and still lifes, in oil, watercolor and pastels. His oils, characterized by rich, thickly-textured paint, have been compared with the works of the German impressionist, Max Liebermann. Erb exhibited regularly at the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Lviv and Krakow and in Zachęta in Warsaw. In 1929 he participated in the Universal National Exhibition in Poznań, and in 1932 in the Polish Art Exhibition in Buffalo. He probably died during the liquidation of the Lviv ghetto. His works are in the National Museum in Krakow, the collections of the Jewish Institute in Warsaw, the Historical Museum in Krakow, the Museum of Ukrainian Art in Lviv and the Lviv Picture Gallery.
