Lev Mezhberg
1933–2007 Painter
An artist who understood the value of silence. Mezhberg painted Odesa like a memory — courtyards, streets, sea air. Soft colour, deep lyricism.
Known as "Grekovka," he studied at the Odesa Art School in 1958 under Teofil Fraerman and Dina Frumina — and it is to Frumina that he owed his creative individuality. "I freed myself from wordiness," the artist said of her influence.
Mikhail Shemyakin called him "the best colourist in contemporary painting."
His work is held by the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, and museums in Kyiv and Odesa. His whole life, wherever he lived abroad, he kept painting Odesa.