Joseph Constant

1892 - 1969

A highly respected sculptor, painter. As a sculptor, Joseph Constantinovsky adopted the name "Joseph Constant", and as a writer he used the pseudonym "Michel Matveev”

Joseph Constant was born in Jaffa on 14 July 1892 to Russian Jewish parents. He spent his early years in Odessa. When still quite young, he took part alongside his father in the anti-Tsarist revolutionary activities of 1905. In 1914, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Odessa, and during the Communist Revolution of 1917 he was named an inspector of fine arts.

In 1919, his father and his brother were killed in an anti-Jewish pogrom. That same year, Constant and his wife decided to quit Russia. They travelled to what was then the Mandate of Palestine aboard the ship SS Ruslan which carried a number of other Jewish artists. In Tel Aviv, they formed an artists' cooperative that included the painter Yitzhak Frenkel.

Later whilst working in Paris in the early 1920s, Constant frequented the district of Montparnasse, a favourite milieu of Russian Jewish artists. This served as the inspiration for his later novel La Cité des Peintres. Here he adopted the pseudonym of Michel Matveev, in his own words, it happened "Un Peu par Hasard et Pour Gagner Quelque Argent" (a little bit by chance and to earn a little money). Interestingly he wrote directly in French.

His first book, on the subject of the 1905 Revolution, was published in 1928. In the 1930s, he gradually abandoned the medium of painting, focusing instead on sculpture. He also continued his activity as a writer and translator. In 1933, he published Les Traqués, a tragic story of Jews travelling across Europe in search of a safe haven. This was translated into English by Desmond Flower under the title Weep Not for the Dead. In 1936, he won the Prix des Deux Magots for his collection of short stories Étrange Famille (Strange Family).

After the second world war, he gained greater renown as a sculptor internationally. From the 1950s onwards, he travelled frequently to Israel, staying at the kibbutz of Ein Harod. In 1962, the mayor of Ramat Gan invited him to take up residence in the artists' quarter in the heart of the city. From then on, Constant shared his time between his studio in Paris and that in Ramat Gan. The latter was converted into a museum upon his death. In 1959, he wrote his last novel Ailleurs, Autrefois, a semi-autobiographical work in which he evoked his childhood and youth in the Ukraine at the turn of the century. He died on 3 October 1969 in Paris.

Plate with Crabs 1930s. Oil on Cardboard

Historical Context

SS Ruslan & The Third Aliyah

The Third Aliyah העלייה השלישית, refers to the third wave of modern Zionist immigration from Europe to the then British controlled Mandate of Palestine. This wave lasted from 1919, just after the end of World War 1 until 1923, at the start of an economic crisis in the Mandate.

Approximately 40,000 Jews arrived during the Third Aliyah. The bellwether of the Third Aliyah was the ship SS Ruslan, which arrived at Jaffa Port on December 19, 1919 carrying over 600 new immigrants and people returning after being stranded in Europe during the Great War.

Most of the newcomers were young halutzim (pioneers), who built roads and towns and commenced the draining of marshes in the Jezreel Valley and the Hefer Plain. Afterwards they became a smaller proportion of the immigrants. The importance of those pioneers was just as great as that of the pioneers of the Second Aliyah. Their ideology contributed a great deal to the construction and restoration of the ancestral Jewish homeland and so they imprinted their mark on Zionism.

The Third Aliyah was triggered by the following factors:

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, which stated Britain's support for use of the Palestine Mandate as a "national home for the Jewish people” and their return.
The Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War led to a wave of pogroms. An estimated 100,000 Jews were killed and 500,000 left homeless.
Upheaval in Europe after World War I with nationalist awakenings amongst the eastern European nations following the birth of nine new countries.
In the new countries which were formed after World War I there was the "problem of the minorities". Battles erupted between small ethnic groups, with riots in divided countries like Poland.
An economic crisis in Europe.
The enactment of Emergency Quota Act, which limited immigration to the United States.
The relative success of the absorption of the Second Aliyah to Israel and the socialist ideologies of the wave.

The official Zionist institutions were opposed to the third immigration wave. They feared that the country would not be able to absorb such a great number of people. They even requested that only people who had enough economic resources come to the country. However, the harsh reality changed their expectations: the bad economic situation of Jews of Eastern Europe, and also the riots, forced many to emigrate to countries which did open their gates —the United States and Western Europe— and to those who had a pioneering impulse and a Zionist recognition, to the British controlled the then named Mandate of Palestine which was their ancestral home and it seemed right they return to build what is now modern Israel.

Notable figures in Israel who were also aboard the SS Ruslan

Baruch Agadati, Dancer, Choreographer, Painter & Film Director

Rachel Bluwstein known as Rachel the Poetess

Menachem Ussishkin, Zionist Leader