Israeli Art - Between East and West: The 1930s and 1940s

Between East and West: The 1930s and 1940s

The return of Jewish artists from Europe in the 1930s to Mandatory Palestine gave rise to a variety of influences from modern art on art in the Land of Israel. At the same time it should be noted that these influences did not motivate the artists toward Avant garde and abstract art in their painting and sculpture. Two of the strongest influences were French art and German art. Gideon Efrat claimed that these influences created two different trends in the plastic arts. While the "Parisian" influence was expressed in a "dynamic softness that melts heavy structures," German art and the "New Objectivity" (Neue Sachlichkeit) which brought with it a static and sculptured monumentality. The most typical influence of the European avant garde is evident in international architectural styles in the Land of Israel, brought by architects who were graduates of the "Bauhaus". The considerable influence of French realism can also be found in the works of a group of artists who were influenced by the trend towards realism of French sculptors of the beginning of the 20th century, such as August Rodin, Aristide Maillol, and others. This symbolic message in content and form appears also in the works of artists of the Land of Israel group, such as Moses Sternschuss, Rafael Chamizer, Moshe Ziffer, Joseph Constant (Constantinovsky), and Dov Feigin, most of whom studied at some point in France.

One sculptor who was influenced by Cubism was Zeev Ben Zvi who, in 1928, after completing his studies at Bezalel, went to study in France. Upon his return he served for a short period as a teacher of sculptor at Bezalel, and at the "New Bezalel". In 1932 Ben Zvi had his first exhibit at the national antiquities museum, "Bezalel," and a year later he had an exhibit at the Tel Aviv Museum. Instead of making use of Cubism as a means of subverting the artistic object, Ben Zvi's sculptures use Cubism as a means of intensifying the feeling of monumentality of the image. In the work of artists such as Chana Orloff and Shalom Sebba as well, the Cubist language in which they shaped their works did not lead them to abandon the realism and the boundaries of traditional representation. In his well-known work, "The Fleece" (1947), for example, Sebba used the Cubist language to intensify the monumentality of his images, while using angles of observation inspired by photography.

Even more striking avant garde trends began to appear in the work of the Jewish photographers, most of whom were influenced by the German avant garde and the expressionists of the 1920s and 1930s. Photography in the land of Israel developed under the encouragement and guidance of the Zionist establishment, under the auspices of groups such as the Jewish National Fund, which commissioned photographs that would spread the Zionist message. Artists such as Zoltan Kluger, Yaakov (Jack) Rosner, and others, documented the Zionist enterprise and the Jewish settlement, sometimes using photographic angles, compositions, and views which took their inspiration from Soviet Communism in Russia. Other photographers sought to use these techniques for artistic or commercial photography.

Helmar Lerski created photographic portraits in typical expressionist style, expressed in his use of light and in the angle of the photograph. In 1936 Larski created 175 photographs of man, which attempted to encompass his personality in its entirety, using a technique called "metamorphosis by means of light"; this technique made use of mirrors, and he even taught it in workshops on the roof of his home in Tel Aviv. Another artist, Alfons Himmelreich, created advertising photographs which emphasized industrial commercialism by using a distortion of the usual standards, close ups, and light for emphasis, as a designer of commercialism. Among the photographers who worked in a more artistic tradition were Richard Levy (Ereel), who created photomontages of semi-abstract figures; Tim (Nahum) Gidal, and the sisters Charlotte and Gerda Meyer, who specialized in architectural photography.

The intensification of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute influenced the works of Arab photographers with a developed political consciousness, such as Ali Zaarur, Chalil Rissas, and others. They acted on their own or as agents of various information agencies, and created photographs in journalistic style. Only from the 1990s did researchers begin to investigate these works as part of historiography, and as the visual representation of the past, with political, ideological, and nationalistic goals in mind.