Moshe Castel On Sale

Moshe Elazar Castel was born in Jerusalem, Ottoman Palestine, in 1909, to Rabbi Yehuda Castel and his wife Rachel. The family was descended from Spanish Jews from Castile who immigrated to the Holy Land after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Castel attended his father’s school until the age of 13. He went on to study at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, where he was encouraged by his teacher to study in Paris, furthering his art education at the Académie Julian and École du Louvre in Paris. He was greatly influenced by European masters Rembrandt, Velázquez, Delacroix and Courbet, after spending his days copying their works hanging in the Louvre. Castel returned to Palestine at the onset of WWII. The subject of Castel’s early paintings were scenes of Sephardic Jews in the Holy Land. In 1947, Castel helped to found the New Horizons (Ofakim Hadashim) group, together with Yosef Zaritsky, Yehezkel Streichman, Marcel Janco and others. During the 1950s, his artwork changed style reflecting his inspiration from ancient relief paintings depicting predecessors of the Jewish people. These paintings were surrounded by ancient ruins of basalt stone blocks, which later on became the foundation for his unique artistic technique. In 1955, a solo exhibition of his works was mounted at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. His murals hang in the Knesset, Binyanei Hauma Convention Center, Rockefeller Center in New York and the official residence of the President of Israel in Jerusalem. In 1959, he purchased a studio in Montparnasse, where he worked for several months a year. Castel used actual ground basalt, mixed with sand and glue, to then form into different shapes, which he then engraved. The engravings, evocative of stone writing tablets, were derived from numerous ancient symbols of Hebrew culture. Moshe Castel produced two major commissions for the Israeli government, consisting of large reliefs in his signature style. A large collection of Mr. Castel’s artwork can be viewed at the Moshe Castel Museum of Art outside of Jerusalem.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

Find fine art prints for sale on 1stDibs today.