Israeli Art Origins: 1906-1948 (Part - 1)

The word "Israeli art" is generally referred to as the "Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts" founded in 1906, in the year Boris Schatz, a European-born Jewish sculptor of Eastern Europe, and a fervent Zionist. The "Bezalel" style was conceived as "Jewish" by many scholars; a concept which reflected the traditional zionist concept that viewed Diospora Jews as an inverse vision of the "modern Jews," who lived and prospered in Palestine. In fact, the study was opened for lacking funding in the past, and was then opening again in 1935. after 23 years of life (1906-1929).

The Jewish art in Palestine, due to its diasporic and allegedly obsolete ("Jewish") characteristics, was originally seen as irrelevant to the zionist business. Scholars named the common word "academic" as such creative practices of the school "Bezalel." The term is used to describe anything which is not necessarily avant-garde. The faulty use of the word helped to argue that Jewish art produced in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s displayed an alleged imitation of the academic style of Bezalel and its consequent dissociation.