in search of the lost shtetl – a visit to the studio of Yuri Krupenkov

By Debra Brunner

In early August, I had the privilege of visiting the studio of Jewish artist Yuri Krupenkov, tucked away in the centre of Minsk. Yuri, born in 1969 in Soviet Belarus, is an extraordinarily talented artist, a member of the Belarusian Art Union, whose work is dedicated to his people and the vanished world of his ancestors, a world erased by the Holocaust, yet still alive on his canvases. His paintings stir a deep sense of loss, longing, and remembrance.

Yuri and his wife, artist Olga Krupenkova, welcomed us warmly into their dusty loft studio, its tall wooden windows flooding the space with beams of sunlight. Everywhere we looked, easels, brushes, and floor-to-ceiling canvases told stories of shtetl life, Jewish towns once vibrant across Belarus. Over tea, we talked about memory, history, and art, before Yuri guided us through his work.

One painting in particular drew me in: a shtetl imagined as a floating planet in the clouds. Every tiny detail revealed scenes of daily life; a wedding under the chuppah in the town square, geese and chickens roaming free, laundry swaying on the line, a villager drawing water from the well, another cutting wood. In the distance stood the synagogue, flanked by two churches, its roof line deliberately lower, in keeping with local laws. It was as if I had been transported into that world, watching a community now gone.

The story of Belarus’s shtetls is central to the country’s history. From the 14th century until the Second World War, shtetls flourished as centres of Jewish life. Before the Holocaust, nearly one million Jews lived in these small towns. They were home to rabbis, traders, tailors, teachers, craftsmen, scholars, and families whose lives revolved around charity, study, tradition, and community. Synagogues were not only houses of prayer but also centres of learning and gathering, while Yiddish, mame loshen (mother tongue), was the language of daily life.

Belarus gave rise to great centres of Jewish learning, including the famous Volozhin Yeshiva, known as “the mother of all yeshivas,” and the Mir Yeshiva, whose influence spread worldwide. Writers like Sholom Aleichem and artists like Yudel Pen and Marc Chagall captured the shtetl spirit in their work, preserving it in literature and art even as the shtetl itself vanished.

The Holocaust destroyed this world almost entirely. Today, only remnants of former shtetl towns remain, their names echoes of what once was. As scholar Yohanan Petrovsky-Stern writes, the shtetl is “the forgotten continent, an East European Atlantis.” A culture, a way of life, a civilization lost, yet still shaping imagination and memory.

Yuri Krupenkov’s art carries memory into the present. Each brushstroke revives the vibrancy of shtetl life, creating a bridge between what was and what must be remembered. In his studio, surrounded by canvases alive with markets, musicians, and dreamlike visions of shtetl dwellers soaring through the skies on a violin, it was clear, his work is not only about history, but about keeping a lost world alive.

Yuri sells his works, takes commissions, and exhibits internationally. For more information, please contact us at [email protected].