Natan Heber

Israeli Judaica Shtetl "The Lesson" Rabbi Studying Scene Naive Art Oil Painting

Natan Heber was trained by his father in Poland to be a ritual slaughterer. In 1925, he joined the Zionist movement "Mizrachi" and in 1936 immigrated to Palestine where he opened a poultry shop in Haifa. He began to paint at the age of sixty-one, after ill health forced him to retire. Driven by a need to memorialize his family and their shtetl community lost in the Holocaust, he drew scenes of traditional Jewish life. Unfamiliar with the conventions of scale and perspective, he set his heavily outlined frontal figures on steeply rising surfaces and often portrayed his father in monumental size to mark his importance. One of Israel's greatest naive-style painters. Along with Shalom of Safed, Kopel Gurwin and Gabriel Cohen, He is renowned as one of Israel's greatest living naive-style folk art painters, The Haifa Museum of Art will be opening the first ever Outsider Art exhibition (also known as Art Brut) in Israel in January 2013. He was included in the show of Outsider art at Haifa Museum The exhibition included works by Classical Outsider artists, none of them have ever been shown in Israel - Henry Darger, Martin Ramirez, Adolf Wölfli, Aloïse, Hauser, Carlo Zinnelli, Bill Traylor, Minnie Evans...

This painting is iconic of Pichas Shaar's aesthetic, and stylistic influences. A ceramic mosaicist and sculptor as well as a painter, Shaars strong decorative sense was evident in his colorful canvas, with their frequent rectilinear geometry, depicting stylized figures, often mythological or biblical subjects. Pinchas Shaar (born Szwarc, later Shaar) was born in Lodz, Poland in 1923. already at a young age he drew small graffiti and characters of fairy tales. at sixteeen he met the Polish painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, a disciple of the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich, who encouraged Pinchas’ artistic education. Strzeminski encouraged Pinchas' artistic education and introduced him to the works of such painters as Picasso, Leger, Matisse, and Mondrian. Pinchas had his first exhibition in 1938 and also completed photomontages for a poetry book by Moshe Broderson that was published in 1939. Then, in September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. On February 1940 the Jews of Lodz had to move to a ghetto and perform forced labor. The artist experienced the horrors of war and the Nazi holocaust concentration camps. Pinchas worked in a prefabricated furniture factory. However, after his artistic abilities were discovered, he became a draftsman. He also designed decorations for the ghetto's theater. In 1944 the Germans liquidated the Lodz ghetto...

Leo Schutzman (1878 - 1962) The Marriage Proposal, circa 1958 Oil on canvas 24 x 20 inches Signed lower left Leo (Kyle) Schutzman (1878-1962) developed ...

Signed lower right, 'M. Watorski' for Mieczyslaw Watorski (Polish, 1903 - 1979) and painted circa 1950. This Polish history and landscape painter is particularly revered for his doc...