 During enforced Socialist Realism and in spite of state-imposed restrictions on Western art, Lembersky continued to synthesize a wide range of influences, including German Expressionism, the French school, Mexican mural painting, Russian icons, African folk art, and Dutch and early Renaissance painting, among others.He was keenly interested in modernist and contemporary literature, poetry, and theater.Music was essential to his art, he regularly attended concerts of classical music and personally knew many musicians, including Dmitri Shostakovitch and conductor Natan Rakhlin, whose portrait he created in the Urals in 1943–44.