Abram Anshelevich Manevich

Manevich was born on 25 November 1881 in Mstsislaw (Mstislavl), then in Mogilev Governorate in the Russian Empire and now in Belarus. He studied at the Kyiv Art School from 1901 to 1905, graduating there, before receiving a three-year scholarship, arranged with the help of patrons including Mykola Biliashivsky, to study at the Academy of Art in Munich from roughly 1905 to 1907. In Munich he also attended the school of the painter Anton Ažbe. On returning to Kyiv, he became part of a modernist milieu that included Oleksandr Bohomazov, Oleksandra Ekster, and Oleksandr Archipenko, and he developed the bold, thickly worked cityscapes and forest scenes that remain his signature subject.

Reference sources describe successful exhibiting in Italy, France, and Switzerland in the years before World War I, though the specific venues and critical reception of these European shows are not independently confirmed. Around 1918 to 1921 he held a teaching role connected to the founding of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts in Kyiv. He emigrated to the United States around 1921 to 1922, a move that biographers connect to the antisemitic violence and pogroms of the period in Kyiv, though sources differ on the exact year of his departure. Settled in New York, he exhibited widely through the 1920s, including at the Brooklyn Museum in 1923, Babcock Gallery and the Peabody Institute in 1924, and the Boston Art Club, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Carnegie Institute in 1925.

Manevich died on 30 June 1942 in New York City, in the Bronx, as reported in a contemporary Jewish Telegraphic Agency obituary. He was 60 years old.

Reference sources describe successful exhibiting in Italy, France, and Switzerland in the years before World War I, though the specific venues and critical reception have not been independently confirmed. Later historians place him within a Fauvist-influenced strand of Post-Impressionist landscape painting, and Ukrainian and Belarusian reference sources consistently describe him as part of the generation that helped define early twentieth century Ukrainian art before his emigration. His American exhibition record through the 1920s, spanning museums and clubs in New York, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, reflects steady if not sensational recognition in his adopted country.

Manevich's auction market is modest in volume and wide in range. Dealer summaries of his sale history describe realized prices running from a few hundred dollars up to his all-time auction high, with results varying substantially by size, medium, and subject. That high is held by Neige dans la foret, which market data identify as having sold for approximately USD 339,978 at Koller Auktionen in Zurich in 2021, the artist's auction record since at least 2001; the exact sale date and any local-currency figure are not independently confirmed. His work also appears periodically at specialist Russian and Ukrainian art sales, including at Sotheby's and MacDougall's, generally at more modest levels.

There is no published catalogue raisonne for Manevich, and no gallery or estate currently offers a formal authentication program, so provenance and documented exhibition history carry particular weight when evaluating a work. His auction supply is thin and prices vary widely by size and subject, which means a single result, including the current record set at Koller in 2021, should be read as one data point rather than a stable benchmark. Museum holdings, including at the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the Brooklyn Museum, and several Russian state museums, are the strongest evidence of his lasting institutional standing.