Timeline

Born November 11 in Lublin, Poland. His father, Samuil Lembersky, was a mathematician, and his mother, Haia Perla (Luba), a practicing musician who studied with Franz Liszt.

World War I
Lembersky family become refugees and move to Berdichev, Western Ukraine.

October Socialist Revolution

Russian Civil War

Lembersky attends public school in Berdichev; develops interest in art, theater design and mathematics.

Moves to Kiev to study art at the Jewish Arts and Trades School, known as Kulturliga, in Kiev.

Artist and designer for Kiev Jewish theater in Kiev and Berdichev. Teaches art in public schools.

Collectivization and The Great Famine in the Ukraine
Socialist Realism becomes a state policy, and all other artistic directions are banned.

Attends the Kiev State Art Institute (the studio of painter Pavel Volokidin).

Studies at the Leningrad Academy of Art, studio of Boris Ioganson.

Meets Ludmila (Lucia) Keiserman (1915–1994), his future wife.

Tours the Urals in 1938.

Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941
The Siege of Leningrad, 1941-44
Parents perish in Berdichev.
Wounded near Leningrad in the summer of 1941.
In the besieged Leningrad, completes and defends his thesis  Workers on Strike at the Urals Plant; awarded Masters degree in easel painting, with high honors for academic achievement.

Evacuated to Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg)
Joins Sverdlovsk Union of Culture led by writer Pavel Bazhov.
In Nizhny Tagil, organizes infrastructure for developing local art; including an art school, the Artists Union, and an art gallery (now the Nizhny Tagil State Museum of Fine Arts). Takes part in five art exhibitions in the Urals; his work is reviewed in the national press.

Returns to Leningrad.
Rejoins postgraduate program at the Russian Academy of Arts. Prepares thesis Oath: Miners of the Mountain Visokaya, devoted  to miners during World War II.

Begins Execution. Babi Yar series (1944-52).
Joins Leningrad chapter of the Union of Soviet Artists, LOSSKh (later LOSKh). Leaves postgraduate program.
Marries Lucia Keiserman. Daughter Galya is born in 1945.

Teaches at the Art College (now Roerikh Art College) and privately in his studio in Leningrad.

Completes triptych Leaders and Children for Anichkov Palace (the Palace of Pioneers).

Creates Novgorod, Pskov and First News: Revolution 1917 series.

Returns to Nizhny Tagil to create Nizhny Tagil series.

Creates Miners, Railway Pointer, and Ladoga series.

A two-person exhibition, with sculptor Moisey (Mikhail) Vayman at the exhibition gallery of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists, LOSSKh.

Repression of the arts after  Manezh exhibition in Moscow.

Vladimir Serov inspects Lembersky's  studio and presses for his expulsion from LOSSKh. Leningrad artists committee rejects Serov's demand.

Creates Dzintari series (current location of these works unknown).
Teaches at LISI and the Palace of Culture for Professional Unions.
Attends Wednesdays at the studio of Avgust and Natalia Lanin.

Lembersky's work is published at Sovetish Heimland (1969 and 1972).
His paintings are selected for a semi-official exhibition in Leningrad that also included Solomon Gershov, Zaveb Arshakuni, German Egoshin, among others.

Dies December 2 at his home in Leningrad. LOSKh organizes a brief exhibition of his work.

Sovetish Heimland includes his work at the ten-year anniversary exhibit of paintings, along with Robert Falk, Aleksandr Gluskin, among others.

Lembersky's widow emigrates, with his oeuvre, to the U.S.