Arieh Merzer

Judaica Silvered Copper Repousse Sculpture Relief Plaque Shtetl Yeshiva Bochur

Hand Forged Iron Stone Mosaic Hanukah Menorah Candelabra David Palombo was an Israeli sculptor and painter. He was born in Turkey to a traditional family and immigrated to the Land of Israel with his parents in 1923. They lived in the Nahalat Shiva neighborhood of Jerusalem. In 1940 he began his studies at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and from 1942 was a student of sculptor Ze’ev Ben-Zvi. For a period of time, Palombo was an assistant at Ben-Zvi’s studio and also taught at Bezalel. During this period he was also a member of the “Histadrut HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed” (The General Federation of Students and Young Workers in Israel). In the 1940s he took art lessons at night. In 1948 he went to Paris, where he visited the studio of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi whose work influenced him. Around 1958 he married the artist Shulamit Sirota. In 1960 he quit his job to devote himself to art. In 1964 he married for the second time to the artist Yona Palombo. The two of them went to live in an abandoned home on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. In 1966 he was killed when the motorcycle on which he was riding ran into a chain stretched across the street to prevent the desecration of Shabbat. His widow opened a museum in their home that was active until the year 2000. Work by Palombo is included in the Judaic collection of the Jewish Museum (a well known Hanukkah menora). Palombo executed the impressive metal gates of the Tent of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem, the memorial to the martyrs of the holocaust, as well as the gates to the Knesset Building the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco award) awarded him a scholarship for study in Japan. He worked in marble, granite, bronze, iron and steel. as well as with glass mosaic tiles. Palombo’s early works, in the 1950s, were influenced by modernist sculptors such as Brancusi. These works were composed of abstract images from nature and were carved out of stone or wood. At the end of the 1950s he began making metal sculptors, using the technique of welding. His work took on a more abstract and expressive character. Education 1940 Painting with Isidor Ascheim, New Bezalel School for Arts and Crafts, Jerusalem 1942 Sculpture with Zeev Ben Zvi, Jerusalem 1956 Mosaic, Ravenna, Italy 1958 Welding Course Awards And Prizes 1966 UNESCO Award Exhibitions: Sculpture in Israel, 1948-1958 Mishkan Museum of Art, Kibbutz Ein Harod Artists: Zvi Aldouby, Yitzhak Danziger, Arieh Merzer, Dov Feigin, Aaron Priver, David Palumbo, Menashe Kadishman, Kosso Eloul, Yehiel Shemi, Zahara Schatz. The Spring Exhibition of Jerusalem Artists, Artists' House, Jerusalem Artists: Palombo, David Bezalel Schatz, Mordechai Levanon, Fima, Ludwig Blum 12 Artists, The Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem Avraham Ofek, Aviva Uri, Avigdor Arikha, Yosl Bergner, Lea Nikel, Palombo, Ruth Zarfati...

Aharon Bezalel (Afghani-Israeli, 1925-2012) Family Grouping Hand signed in with initials in English Figures fit together like puzzle pieces in solid cast bronze with original patina. Aharon Bezalel (born Afghanistan 1926) Born in Herat, Afghanistan in 1926 and immigrated to Israel at an early age. His father, Reuven Bezalel, was a rabbi and kabbalist. As a youth Aharon studied gold and silver casting as well as applied arts and worked in these fields as a silversmith and judaica craftsman, and was a student of the sculptor Zev Ben-Zvi at the Bezalel Academy for Art & Design where he also studied with Isidor Ascheim and Mordecai Ardon. There he absorbed the basic concepts of classic and modernist art and interpreted, according to them, ideas based on ancient Hebrew sources. He also studied miniature carving with the artists Martin and Helga Rost applying himself at their workshop. Aharon Bezalel worked and resided in Jerusalem, he taught art for many years. His sculptures - works of wood, bronze, aluminum, Plexiglas - were shown at his studio in Ein Kerem. “I saw myself as part of this region. I wanted to find the contact between my art and my surroundings. Those were the first years of Jean Piro’s excavations at the Beer-Sheba mound. They found there, for example, the Canaanite figurines that I especially liked and that were an element that connected me with the past and with this place.” “…a seed and sperm or male and female. These continue life. The singular, the individual alone, cannot exist; I learned this from my father who dabbled with the Kabbalah.” (Aharon Bezalel, excerpt from an interview with David Gerstein) “The singular in Aharon Bezalel’s work is always potentially a couple if not a threesome, the one is also the many: when the individual is revealed within the group he will always seek a huddling, a clinging together. The principle of modular construction is required by this perception of unity and multiplicity, as modular construction in his work is an act of conception or defense. His work bears a similarity to Berrocal as well as affinities to Henry Moore, Lynne Chadwick and Kenneth Armitage. Two poles of unity, potentially alone, exist in A. Bezalel’s world: From a formal, sculptural sense these are the sphere and pillar, metaphorically these are the female in the final stages of pregnancy and the solitary male individual. Sphere-seed-woman; Pillar-strand-man. The disproportional, small heads in A. Bezalel figures leave humankind in it’s primal physical capacity. The woman as a pregnancy or hips, the man as an aggressive or defensive force, the elongated chest serves as a phallus and weapon simultaneously. (Gideon Ofrat) EIN HAROD About the Museum's Holdings: Israeli art is represented by the works of Reuven Rubin, Zaritzky, Nahum Gutman...

Europe & Zeus (divine love) Europa the daughter of the Phoenician king of Tyre, Agenor and Zeus in love in the shape of the bull. Bronze, on onyx pedestal Signed: Bruno Zach

Frank Arnold is thought by many to be one of the foremost abstract figurative painters and sculptors of our time. He is a living master whose work is considered to be both personal a...