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.

Yosl Bergner (1920-2017), Utensils.
Oil on Masonite. Signed, inscribed to "Ami, with greetings from Hinda, Audrey and Yosl" and dated 1972.
Approx. 54.5X37 cm. Good condition. Framed.
Provenance: The estate of Shmulik Segal.
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Yosl Bergner (1920-2017) was born in Vienna. His parents, singer Fanya Bergner and poet Melech Ravitch, were active in various cultural and intellectual circles, nurturing his creativity from a young age. In his youth he studied painting with artist Hirsch Altman in Warsaw, and at the age of seventeen immigrated with his sister to Australia, where he studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne. During World War II, he served in the Australian Army. After the war, he married artist and writer Audrey Bergner, and in 1950 the two immigrated to Israel. Bergner first settled in Safed, later moving to Tel-Aviv, where he lived and worked until his death at the age of 97.
Bergner was a prolific artist, working in various fields – painting, book illustration and scenic and costume design. His multifaceted work, at times somber and at times bright, is inspired by surrealism and symbolism. Art critic Dr. Gideon Ofrat, in a tribute to Bergner published in the Erev Rav journal (January 2017), writes: "Ever since the paintings he made in the 1940s after the stories of Y.L. Peretz, Bergner never ceased telling us stories with his paintings. The stories of the Jewish sage, whose one eye is laughing while the other is weeping. Bergner never stopped telling the stories of the exiles, the expelled, the refugees, the seekers of the shore of Redemption […] Bergner repeatedly declared in his paintings: for the exiled wanderers – these furniture, kitchen utensils, lanterns, etc. – there is no safe haven; any safe haven is nothing but an existential illusion. And thus, in an endless desert […] and under the bleak sky, Bergner sentences humankinds – Jews and non-Jews alike – to what Y.H. Brenner calls 'exile everywhere' and 'an existence of thorns'" (Hebrew).

Two drawings by Yosl Bergner (1920-2017).
1. Scarasella (a portrait of Shmulik Segal as Scarasella in the play "The Gypsies of Jaffa" by Nissim Aloni). Mixed media on paper. Inscribed to Shmulik Segal (Yiddish), signed and dated 1971.
24X17 cm. Good condition.
2. Portrait of Shmulik Segal. Mixed media on paper. Inscribed to Shmulik Segal (Yiddish), signed and dated 1961/1971.
24X21.5 cm. Good condition.
Both drawings are framed together; unexamined out of frame.
Provenance: The estate of Shmulik Segal.
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Yosl Bergner (1920-2017) was born in Vienna. His parents, singer Fanya Bergner and poet Melech Ravitch, were active in various cultural and intellectual circles, nurturing his creativity from a young age. In his youth he studied painting with artist Hirsch Altman in Warsaw, and at the age of seventeen immigrated with his sister to Australia, where he studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne. During World War II, he served in the Australian Army. After the war, he married artist and writer Audrey Bergner, and in 1950 the two immigrated to Israel. Bergner first settled in Safed, later moving to Tel-Aviv, where he lived and worked until his death at the age of 97.
Bergner was a prolific artist, working in various fields – painting, book illustration and scenic and costume design. His multifaceted work, at times somber and at times bright, is inspired by surrealism and symbolism. Art critic Dr. Gideon Ofrat, in a tribute to Bergner published in the Erev Rav journal (January 2017), writes: "Ever since the paintings he made in the 1940s after the stories of Y.L. Peretz, Bergner never ceased telling us stories with his paintings. The stories of the Jewish sage, whose one eye is laughing while the other is weeping. Bergner never stopped telling the stories of the exiles, the expelled, the refugees, the seekers of the shore of Redemption […] Bergner repeatedly declared in his paintings: for the exiled wanderers – these furniture, kitchen utensils, lanterns, etc. – there is no safe haven; any safe haven is nothing but an existential illusion. And thus, in an endless desert […] and under the bleak sky, Bergner sentences humankinds – Jews and non-Jews alike – to what Y.H. Brenner calls 'exile everywhere' and 'an existence of thorns'" (Hebrew).

Yosl Bergner (1920-2017), Untitled, 1961.
Mixed media on paper. Signed and dated.
70.5X50 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes. Framed; unexamined out of frame.
Provenance: The Estate of Shmulik Segal.
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Yosl Bergner (1920-2017) was born in Vienna. His parents, singer Fanya Bergner and poet Melech Ravitch, were active in various cultural and intellectual circles, nurturing his creativity from a young age. In his youth he studied painting with artist Hirsch Altman in Warsaw, and at the age of seventeen immigrated with his sister to Australia, where he studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne. During World War II, he served in the Australian Army. After the war, he married artist and writer Audrey Bergner, and in 1950 the two immigrated to Israel. Bergner first settled in Safed, later moving to Tel-Aviv, where he lived and worked until his death at the age of 97.
Bergner was a prolific artist, working in various fields – painting, book illustration and scenic and costume design. His multifaceted work, at times somber and at times bright, is inspired by surrealism and symbolism. Art critic Dr. Gideon Ofrat, in a tribute to Bergner published in the Erev Rav journal (January 2017), writes: "Ever since the paintings he made in the 1940s after the stories of Y.L. Peretz, Bergner never ceased telling us stories with his paintings. The stories of the Jewish sage, whose one eye is laughing while the other is weeping. Bergner never stopped telling the stories of the exiles, the expelled, the refugees, the seekers of the shore of Redemption […] Bergner repeatedly declared in his paintings: for the exiled wanderers – these furniture, kitchen utensils, lanterns, etc. – there is no safe haven; any safe haven is nothing but an existential illusion. And thus, in an endless desert […] and under the bleak sky, Bergner sentences humankinds – Jews and non-Jews alike – to what Y.H. Brenner calls 'exile everywhere' and 'an existence of thorns'" (Hebrew).