"The Ten Plagues", two sketches for an illustration accompanying the Passover Haggadah, made by Arieh Allweil (1901-1967). [Israel, ca. early 1950s].
1. Sheet of paper depicting a soldier throwing a grenade against the backdrop of a battlefield, surrounded by ten preliminary sketches of miniatures representing the Ten Plagues.
Mixed media on paper. Signed.
50X62 cm. Good condition. Abrasions. Small closed and open tears. Pinholes.
2. Hollow rectangular paper sheet (complementing the abovementioned illustration), depicting ten miniatures of the Ten Plagues. Each miniature incorporates the first letter of the plague. This is the final version of the sketches described in paragraph 1.?Mixed media on paper.
50X64 cm. Good condition. Pinholes to margins. Stains and traces of tape. Printing instructions in pen on the margins.
The illustration was printed in a Passover Haggadah accompanied by an introduction and commentaries by Max Brod and Y.M. Lask and seventeen illustrations by Allweil. Tel Aviv: "Sinai", [1954].
Arieh Allweil (1901-1967), born in Boibrik (Bíbrka, Galicia), established a group of "HaShomer Hatza'ir" in his hometown and in 1920 immigrated to Palestine as a pioneer. He was one of the founders of Upper Bitaniyah, the first settlement attempt of "HaShomer HaTzair" in Palestine. In 1921, following the Bitaniyah Affair, he quit the group and returned to Europe to study art at the Vienna Art Academy. During his studies there he joined the Kunstschau group of avant-garde artists, whose members also included Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, made his first works of art, including the series of prints "Turah Aforah" inspired by his time at Upper Bitaniyah, and displayed his works in the group's exhibitions. In 1926, he returned to Palestine, where he worked as a painter and teacher, and was one of the founders of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Israel Painters and Sculptors Association, and the "HaMidrasha" art school in Tel Aviv. He also self-published his books, in the "Hillel" publishing house he had founded. In his artistic work – his paintings of the views of Palestine and his activity as a central figure in Israeli artistic circles – Arieh Allweil continued his life's work as a pioneer.
Arieh Allweil worked en plein air. During his first years in Palestine, he struggled to adjust to the local light. However, with time he developed his own unique style of landscape painting, working mostly in the soft morning light. In his autobiographical writings, he reminiscenced: "For two years I destroyed everything I painted. The Eretz-Israeli landscape denied itself to a painter from the Vienna woods [...] The blazing sun tore my pictures with dullness. It is not easy to 'conquer' this landscape […] The Eretz Israeli landscape pushed all traces of Cubism, and of Fauvism too, out of my paintings" (Arieh Allweil: Letters, Figures, Landscapes, by Galia Bar Or. Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, 2015. p. 90).
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.

Twelve portraits of Gabriel Talphir, art critic and editor of the journal "Gazith". 1960s-1970s.
Twelve portraits in various media (pencils, ink, pastel and more, on paper), by artists Joshua Neustein (b. 1940); David Messer (1912-1999); David Azuz (b. 1942), Abba Fenichel (1906-1986); Shaoul Smira (b. 1939); Yitzhak Amitai (1907-1984); Chaim Rosenthal (1938-2011); David Gerstein (b. 1944); Aliza Nahor (1915-1987); and Sarah Voscoboinic (?) (1901-1968).
Gabriel Talphir (1901-1990), an art critic, poet, editor and translator, was born in Stanislaw, Galicia, and immigrated to Palestine in 1925. He was the founder of the journal "Gazith" which featured articles about art history, theater and architecture, critique, short monographs of artists (mainly Israeli and Jewish artists) and black and white reproductions of works of art. For many years, "Gazith" was the only journal in Israel dedicated mostly to plastic arts. Being a central figure in the Israeli art scene, Talphir was the subject of many portraits by various artists.
Most of the portraits are signed and dated.
Size and condition vary. Good overall condition. Stains and blemishes.

Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon [The Love of Cupid and Psyche] by Apuleius. Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot, 1880 (date on the cover: 1881). French. A copy with a large "Ex Libris" drawing by Leah Goldberg.
French translation of the story Cupid and Psyche from The Golden Ass by Roman author Lucius Apuleius. Accompanied by 32 plates of prints after paintings by Raphael, signed in the plate "C. Normand" (Charles Pierre Joseph Normand?).
Re-bound, with new endpapers (original cover laid down). Ink drawing by poet Leah Goldberg on front endpaper – on the right, a woman is seen (Goldberg herself?) holding a sign reading "Lea Goldberg". On the upper part of the illustration appears the inscription "Ex Libris".
[37] pp + 32 plates, approx. 32 cm. Fair condition. Stains, an open tear and pieces of paper glued to margins of endpaper with Goldberg's drawing (not affecting drawing). Small tears to edges of leaves. Large open tears to original back cover. Inked stamps to back endpaper.
This edition of the book is not listed in OCLC.
Provenance: The Tuvya Ruebner Collection.

Leah Goldberg (1911-1970), three paintings.
Various media on paper. One drawing is signed.
One of the drawings incorporates the words "Dante Alighieri" and "Purgatorio" (Purgatory, described in the second part of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy). The other two were also, presumably, inspired by the Divine Comedy.
Dante Alighieri was a source of inspiration for Goldberg. She translated several of his poems into Hebrew and taught his works at the Hebrew University.
Approx. 33X24.5 cm to 25X35 cm. Good condition. Stains, mostly minor.
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Leah Goldberg (1911-1970), a leading Hebrew-language poet, author, translator, scholar and literary critic, was also a visual artist. She illustrated several of her own books, including "HaMefuzar Mikfar Azar" ("The Absentminded Fellow"), an adaptation of a Russian story by Samuil Marshak. In the last years of her life, she devoted much of her time to visual art, at first focusing mainly on sketching and later on collage. Her collages were shown in two exhibitions during her lifetime – at the Jerusalem Artists House (1968) and at the Kfar Menachem gallery (1969).
In an interview from 1969, Goldberg said: "The urge to create is the same both in poetry and in painting, but I do not create illustrations of my poetic thoughts. My associations when painting are definitely not literary. […] I need painting to escape from literature to another, more substantive world. Writers are drawn to painting since they are searching for a real existence whose perception is direct. Presumably, this is the reason I escaped to painting, because I hardly write". In the same interview, Goldberg also addressed her occupation with collage: "In collage I have the ambition to take material and use it differently […] I also enjoy cutting the paper, and mounting it, and the fact that I am changing its meaning. In collage, it is easier for me to reach the abstract; I love a good abstract but cannot reach absolute abstraction. Even in my less material poems there is something that is related to figurative art".
See:
1. Leah Goldberg (Hebrew) by Hamutal Bar-Yosef. Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2012. pp. 284-287.
2. Light Along the Edge of a Cloud (Hebrew), by Giddon Ticotsky. HaKibbutz HaMeuchad – Sifriyat Poalim, 2011.

Ruth Schloss (1922-2013), portraits – six sketches.
Ink and marker pen on paper. Four of them are signed.
Approx. 27X20.5 cm to 36.5X29 cm. Condition varies. Stains.
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
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Ruth Schloss (1922-2013) was born in Nuremberg and immigrated to Palestine with her family in 1935. When she was only sixteen she started her studies at Bezalel, then joined the group of founders of Kibbutz Lehavot HaBashan. Schloss devoted her talents to the art and printing enterprises of the kibbutz movement, working as an illustrator for the "Mishmar Liyeladim" newspaper and as a book cover designer for "Sifriyat Poalim". From ca. 1950 to 1952 she studied art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and after returning to Israel, due to the rift in the Kibbutz Movement, she left her kibbutz. Schloss was a member of the Communist Party and her paintings, in the style of Social Realism, often conveyed a socialist message of exposing social differences and class distinctions. She painted the weaker members of society – downtrodden women, hungry children, workers and residents of transit camps. Later, she turned to the lives of women, to the helplessness of birth and the decline of old age – all of which she painted with the sensitivity of a woman seeing human-beings rooted in their surroundings, as the poet Nathan Zach wrote of her – "her motto remained the same over the years. Life itself. Without embellishment".
Literature: Wider Horizons, 120 Years of Israeli Art, from the Ofrat Collection to the Levin Collection. Selected Works, Part II (Hebrew), by Gideon Ofrat. Jerusalem: Vienna-Jerusalem Foundation for Israeli Art, 2013.