Israeli Art Origins: 1906-1948 (Part 2)

From the establishment of "Bezalel's" in Jerusalem to 1948 the 42 years of Jewish-Hebrew art can be summarized as a string to create a special 'Hebrew Art,' i. e. a collection of art styles variations which, while adhering to western trends, would be uniquely local, but distinct from "the Jewish art of the Diaspora." The 1920's and the 1930's indicate that the ideas and, often, Utopian searches for a Hebrew art that reflects Zionist values have appealed to scholars and men of letters. Hebrew poet Hayim Nachman Bialich, art historian Karl Schwartz and, later on, poet Avraham Shlonsky, art critic Eugen Kolb and Haim Gamzu, writer Yes were the contributors to the exhibition.

All those who contributed ideas on the perfect "Hebrew" art, both local and national, never materialized, as most artists who immigrated into Jewish Palestine had their own ideas and values absorbed from their home countries. The desired fusion in a local style in order to create a special "original" art has therefore never come to fruition.

Works from the 1920's and 1930's deal with a variety of quasi-oriental observations of the local landscape, primarily rural views. The works of artists Arieh Lubin, Ludwig Blum and Reuven Rubin are the leading examples for this phenomenon. The Old Towns of Jaffa, Tiberia, Safed and, more specifically, Jerusalem were fascinating artists such as Mordechai Levanon and Yitzhak Frenkel. The artist also held the high regard and almost revered images of the Arabs, local inhabitants of the region, in other artists such as Nahim Gutman and Pinchas Litvinowsky; they documented the stereotypical features of rural people, land-workers.

The 1920's and 1930's saw the ties developed in Cairo, Alexandria and Beirut between the Jewish art sector in Palestine and the nearby art fields, as well as with Jewish art patrons and dealers in Europe and the US. In the Art Galleries of Alexandria Jewish artists from Palestine displayed and sold their work in remote places like India.