MAY 12, 1950
THE CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
11
ARTISTS IN PALESTINE
(Continued from Page Ten) often outside the country, since they are modern voices of the ancient land of the Bible calling out to the world.
A different kind of change has been Ludwig Schwerin's. Within the span of a few years he has developed from an illustrator and caricaturist into a serious artist of Increasingly expressive power. In his native southern Germany his obvious talent won him fame as an illustrator who dwelt lovingly on every minute detail, in the , style of the intimately elegiac late romanticists. In Palestine, some eight years ago, he began tn use a , similar style in his anecdotal drawings, relating especially to Tel Aviv city types. But a visit to a kibbutz brought him In touch with the country and its people, and impressed him so much that he repeatedly returned to it.
The wide plains and the gentle hills under the radiant light, the rhythm of work, the entire scheme of life and labor�all penetrated him deeply. Gradually he put off his preoccupation with the small and insignificant. His technique also took on greater breadth; his pictures grew larger in size and greater in expressive power. Silenced was the romanticist as the mighty voice of the present suffused him. Inspired by the marvelous polyphony of this joyous world, he found the pencil no longer sufficient and began to make increasingly effective use of color. For those who have followed the achievements of individual ar-turts in the last fifteen years, their changes in style and expression present an interesting problem. It l| is not alone the growing into in-/ dividual maturity; it is largely a question of the part played by / the special conditions of the country. And here a curious paradox appears. While the stamp of Palestine has not deeply registered on many of those who have been living there the longest, it is the later arrivals bringing with them the
s,
greatest fund of experiences who have reacted most sensitively to the challenge of'the countrf. And ihu* they are contributing positive values and goals to Palestinian art.
This is true also in the applied arts. For what we are after is not merely .the production of more fine textiles, ceramics and other objects of the craftsman's art. We want, ahpve all, the creation of a fine Palestinian art-craft industry � something that is our own spiritual possession, that has grown out of our own spiritual sources, that speaks our own language.
Here we may happily note a marked advance in the graphic arts. The expansion of Hebrew book publishing has been one of the contributing factors. Joseph Bndko and Jacob Steinhardt, both with reputations as excellent graphic artists won in other countries, have served as guides and teachers. Though Budko could do no more than provide the stimulus, it has borne good fruit among
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his followers at the Bezalel School. One of Jacob Steinhardt's pupils deserves special mention. Thirty-year-old Jacob Pins lived in a kibbutz for five years after his arrival from Germany, and has worked in art for the past six years. He has become a woodcut artist of rank. His wood engraving and woodcuts, whether intended as illustration or as separate large-sized prints, signalize a valuable addition to the rhythmic art of black and white.
Lack of technical facilities has hampered other types of work in the graphic field. For instance, there is no etching press available. Lithographic equipment was set up only recently. This is all the more unfortunate in view of the fact that there are a number of good black and white artists who are thus limited to drawings.
Several more painters richly deserve to become known in America. Leo Kahn and Isidor Aschheim were well-known artists in Europe before they came to Palestine. Kahn, after working for many years in Germany, was active seven years in France, mostly in the immediate circle of Derain, before he arrived in Palestine, a mature artist at the age of forty-three. Only after a long period did he show his water colors done in Palestine. In these large bright colorful pictures, the shimmer of transparency of the sun-drenched atmosphere is rendered with a subtle pictorial sense through the simplest choice of means. He has developed a rich tonal scale unprecedented in variety, ranging from the faintest pale to the densest dark, and he has thereby opened an approach to the difficult problem facing the local artists.
�Isidor Aschheim, too, rapidly acquired a luminous palette which he applies broadly to emphasize the bold sweep of his compositions. A powerful rhythm contrasts his present work with his earlier somewhat unwieldly manner. Movement has lightness and airiness, making one aware of pulsing new life. The fresh vivacity of his colors seems to breathe from every pore of his portraits.
Quite different is the approach of Mordecai Bronstein, who builds up his paintings with dramatic color masses applied in thick layers. Yet he creates a pellucid form endowed with mysterious power. In their spiritual conception his large color symphonies are akin to the drawings of Krakauer, since Bronstein too gives expression to aspects of nature which are timeless in their sublimity. One has the impression of a curtain suddenly risen upon a stage set. The light does not illumine the scene externally as does the sun in nature, but seems to emanate from the colors themselves, lending them a life of their own.
Aaron Kahana offers an interesting example of an artist's efforts to acquire a new orientation. He began by painting naturalistic landscapes, but his dark palette became brighter almost at once. Quickly grasping the essence of the new light effect, he modified his color scheme accordingly. He had the courage to attempt to capture the blazing sunlight. He became astonishingly successful in rendering the contrast between "the azure of the sky and its brilliant reflection on the land surface. Recently, however, he has turned to a more constructive realism, stressing architectonic values organized into specific oriental rhythms. His works of the last two years are a remarkable achievement in the creation of novel color harmonies.
In the same trend of anti-impressionist pictorial structure, S. Sebba seems to present the greatest potentialities. Trained in the Berlin Hocfaehule, possessed of mathematical and architectural knowledge, adept in various arts
and crafts, versed in stage design, travel-educated over half the globe, Sebba is a master of every art technique. He approaches his work in a relentlessly strict, unsentimental mood. His goals are simplicity and clarity of form, with precisely controlled rhythm. Each of his works is based on long observation, on many �� frequently hundreds � of detailed studies; and each is finally reduced to the utmost austerity. The color scheme is of the greatest economy, each color making its separate contribution to the collective harmony.
He uses methods of the widest variety � as, for instance, in the superimposition of several color planes in order to obtain a greater plastic depth. One of his experiments is to apply a color to each of several thin plastic plates and then place them on top of one another. The light penetrating from the sides produces a quality of heightened plasticity. Thus, Sebba's work offers a new manner of representing solidity. In the measure that he has succeeded in transforming naturalism into a more significant realism, be has discovered a formula for a new mode of expression.
Marcel Jancu followed an entirely different line of development. He passed through all the "isms"; was well known as an ex-
treme member of "Dada". But after absorbing the local Palestinian impressions he assumed an air so thoroughly oriental as to make one believe he was to the manner born, not the latest to arrive here. With a certain cheerful unconcern, through which, one may glimpse his leaning to caricature, he transforms the phenomena of the real world into the decoratively abstract. More illustrator than painter, the main role in his paintings is played by the strongly accented rhythm of line at the expense of color. He equates Palestine with movement which he translates into articulated forms of his own invention. Yet his colors, too, have a thoroughly oriental consonance: lustrous and resplendent when applied to enliven his pen and ink drawings; extraordinarily dense yet somehow translucent in the decoratively flat organization of his paintings. Jancu shows us a new Palestine in a form hitherto unrealized. His genius has added a new note to the art of Palestine. Of special importance too is the art of Johanan Simon. Simon came to Palestine at the ape of thirty, after a sound training in Germany and France. He joined a kibbutz as an ordinary worker, because he* considers the kibbutz a source for the development of strong and healthy personality. Labor, the
spirit of cooperative social living, contact with the soil � a life so new, so elevating, so pregnant with the future, a life he had sought previously in Spain, in America and elsewhere, he has now found in Palestine. He began to paint again in his spare hours, the first
among kibbutz members to take up this practice, thus becoming a model for others who followed. For his example attracted widespread interest. Recognizing the need of furnishing systematic instruction to the art-hungry, he organized (Continued on Page Sixteen)
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