page_title: Israeli sculpture
section_title: Early sculpture in the Land of Israel
hierarchical_section_title: Israeli sculpture / History / Early sculpture in the Land of Israel
caption_attribution_description: עברית: בוריס ש"ץ בסטודיו שלו מפסל את דמותו של הרצל.
context_page_description: Israeli sculpture designates sculpture produced in the Land of Israel from 1906, the year the "Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts" was established. The process of crystallization of Israeli sculpture was influenced at every stage by international sculpture. In the early period of Israeli sculpture, most of its important sculptors were immigrants to the Land of Israel, and their art was a synthesis of the influence of European sculpture with the way in which the national artistic identity developed in the Land of Israel and later in the State of Israel.
  Efforts toward the development of a local style of sculpture began in the late 1930s, with the creation of "Caananite" sculpture, which combined influences from European sculpture with motifs taken from the East, and particularly from Mesopotamia. These motifs were formulated in national terms and strived to present the relationship between Zionism and the soil of the homeland.
context_section_description: The beginning of sculpture in the Land of Israel, and of Israeli art in general, is usually designated as 1906, the year of the founding of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz. Schatz, who studied sculpture in Paris with Mark Antokolski, was already a well-known sculptor when he arrived in Jerusalem.  He specialized in relief portraiture of Jewish subjects in an academic style.
  Schatz's work attempted to establish a new Jewish-Zionist identity He expressed this by using figures from the Bible within a framework derived from European Christian culture. His work "Matthew the Hasmoneum" (1894), for example, depicted the Jewish national hero Mattathias ben Johanan grasping a sword and with his foot on the body of a Greek soldier. This kind of representation is connected to the ideological theme of "The Victory of Good Over Evil", as expressed, for example, in the figure of Perseus in a sculpture from the 15th century. Even a series of memorial plaques Schatz created for the leaders of the Jewish settlement is derived from Classical art, combined with the descriptive tradition in the spirit of the Ars Novo tradition. The influence of Classical and Renaissance art on Schatz can be seen even in the copies of sculptures he ordered for Bezalel, which he displayed in the Bezalel Museum as examples of ideal sculpture for the students in the school. These sculptures include "David" (1473–1475) and "Putto with a Dolphin" (1470) by Andrea del Verrocchio.
  The studies at Bezalel tended to favor painting, drawing, and design, and as a result the amount of three-dimensional sculpture turned out there was limited. Among the few workshops which opened at the school was one in woodcarving, in which reliefs of various Zionist and Jewish leaders were produced, along with workshops in decorative design in applied art using techniques such as hammering copper into thin sheets, setting gems, etc. In 1912 a department for ivory design, which also emphasized the applied arts, was opened. In the course of its activities workshops were added that functioned nearly autonomously. In a memo issued in June 1924, Schatz outlined all of the major fields of activity of Bezalel, among them stone sculpture, which was founded primarily by students of the school within the framework of the "Jewish Legion" and the workshop on woodcarving.
  Besides Schatz, there were several other artists in Jerusalem in the early days of Bezalel who were working in the field of sculpture. In 1912 Ze'ev Raban immigrated to the Land of Israel at Schatz's invitation and served as an instructor in sculpture, sheet copper work, and anatomy at Bezalel. Raban had trained in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and later at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. In addition to his well-known graphic work, Raban created figurative sculptures and reliefs in the academic "Oriental" style, such as the terracotta figurine of the Biblical figures "Eli and Samuel" (1914), who are depicted as Yemenite Jews.  However Raban's most important work focused on embossments for jewelry and other decorative items.
  Other instructors at Bezalel also created sculptures in the realistic academic style. Eliezer Strich, for instance, created busts of people in the Jewish settlement. Another artist, Yitzhak Sirkin carved portraits in wood and in stone.
  The main contribution to Israel sculpture of this period can be contributed to Abraham Melnikoff, who worked outside the framework of Bezalel. Melnikoff created his first work in Israel in 1919, after he arrived in the Land of Israel during his service in the "Jewish Legion". Until the 1930s, Melnikoff produced a series of sculptures in various kinds of stone, mostly portraiture done in terracotta and stylized images carved out of stone. Among his significant works is a group of symbolic sculptures depicting the awakening of the Jewish identity, such as "The Awakening Judah" (1925), or memorial monuments to Ahad Ha'am (1928) and to Max Nordau (1928). In addition, Melniko
caption: Boris Schatz sculpts the figure of Theodor Herzl
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