Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
Including: Items from the Estate of Ruth Dayan, Old Master Works, Israeli Art and Numismatics
December 21, 2021
Displaying 25 - 36 of 58
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $300
Sold for: $375
Including buyer's premium
Leopold Krakauer (1890-1954), Thistle. Charcoal on paper. Unsigned. 54X69 cm. Framed, 90X76 cm with frame. Unexamined out of frame.
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $200
Unsold
Jacob Steinhardt (1887-1968), sketch for an illustration. 1950. Mixed media on paper.
70X50 cm. Thin paper. Good condition. Fold lines. Stains and creases. Several tears and pinholes to edges.
Sketch for a triptych delineating three ages in the history of the Jewish people – the exodus, the Babylonian captivity and the 20th-century Jewish return from diaspora (three horizontal panels, titled in German: "Pyramiden", "Babylon", "Kibbuz"). At left, German text in Steinhardt's hand (signed and dated 1950), giving printing instructions.
Jacob Steinhardt (1887-1968) was born in Zerkow, Prussia. Studied painting in Berlin under Lovis Corinth and etching with Hermann Struck. Co-founded, with the artists Ludwig Meidner and Richard Janthur, the expressionist group "Die Pathetiker". With the outbreak of World War I, Steinhardt enlisted in the German army and was positioned in Lithuania, where he became familiar with the traditional lifestyle of local Jews. His portrait sketches of Lithuanian Jews were exhibited by the Berlin Secession in 1917, and earned him a place as member of the group. After the war, he started making woodcuts inspired by war images and his awakened Jewish identity. In 1933, he immigrated to Palestine with his wife and daughter and after several months in Tel Aviv settled in Jerusalem. In 1949, Steinhardt was appointed the director of the graphics department of New Bezalel. Between 1953 and 1957, he headed the school. Steinhardt, a prominent artist of German Expressionism, was famous mainly for his woodcuts; however, he never abandoned the easel. His work manifests humane protest alongside nostalgia for biblical times and the Shtetl. Heinspired a generation of students who continued his expressionist style.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $1,000
Sold for: $1,250
Including buyer's premium
Wilhelm Wachtel (1875-1942), Halutzim Dancing Hora. Watercolor and pastel on paper. Signed.
48X63 cm, in a 61.5X77.5 cm frame. Good condition. Minor blemishes to edges.
Wilhelm (Ze'ev) Wachtel (1875-1942), Polish painter, illustrator and graphic designer, born in Lviv, acquired his artistic training at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts and later at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Active in Poland, Austria and France. In 1936, he immigrated to Palestine, later moving to the USA, where he passed away. Wachtel is known for his realistic Shtetl images, pictures from the lives of the halutzim (pioneers) of Palestine and Romantic and Oriental biblical scenes inspired by the Bezalel school.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $800
Sold for: $1,000
Including buyer's premium
Aharon Giladi (1907-1993), Figures in a Room. Oil on canvas. Signed 46X54 cm, in a 69.5X77 cm frame. Minor blemishes to paint.
Aharon Giladi (1907-1993) was born in Gomel. He acquired his artistic training at the Petrograd Art Academy. As an "HaShomer HaTzair" activist he was arrested, serving time in Siberia; in 1929 he was released and immediately immigrated to Palestine. After spending some time preparing in Kvutzat Kinneret, he and his group founded Kibbutz Afikim. He lived almost two decades in the Kibbutz, working regular shifts and dedicating the evenings to his artistic work. In 1947, he finally left the Kibbutz. Giladi was a member of the Ofakim Hadashim (New Horizons) group, and won the Dizengoff prize for painting twice, in 1948 and 1952. "Giladi is intense and inquisitive; he does not accept life as final, but as an ever-changing process. People and views – sometimes together, at times separately – are the main themes of his work. Both are softly radiant, spiritual… the painter knows how to access subtleties within his own being, and seems to discover them at the same time with his audience. He is one of the first artists to show the unique atmosphere in the Kibbutz dining room and cultural hall, during lunch or dinner…". (Dr. Haim Gamzu: Art Critiques. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2006. pp. 215).
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $300
Unsold
Jakob Eisenscher (1896-1980), Female Portrait (wife of the artist?).
Acrylic on paper. Signed. 50X70 cm.
Jakob Eisenscher (1896-1980), native of Chernovitz (Chernivtsi; then in the Bukovina region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; today in western Ukraine). Received his artistic training at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army at the outbreak of WWI in 1914; was taken captive by the Italian army, and spent the remaining war years in a prisoner of war camp. Began creating woodcuts after returning to Chernovitz, then a center of Yiddish avant-garde culture. Moved to Paris in the early 1930s, where he was exposed to Cubism; from then on, he defined himself as a "cubist expressionist." Immigrated to Palestine in 1935, settling in Tel Aviv and earning a living as a photographer. Taught at Bezalel from 1953 to 1968. In the words of art critic Gideon Ofrat (see below), his later works are characterized by a "semi-Cubist, colorist painterly language."
Reference: Gideon Ofrat, "Broader Horizons, 120 Years of Israeli Art, from the Ofrat Collection to the Levin Collection, Selected Works, " Part II, Vienna-Jerusalem Foundation for Israeli Art, Jerusalem, 2013, Hebrew (English edition available), p.114.
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $100
Sold for: $125
Including buyer's premium
Leon (Arie) Fein (1906-1993), Portrait of the Poet Yocheved Bat-Miriam, 1947. Oil on Canvas. Signed and dated.
43X36 cm (frame: 67.5X60 cm).
Leon (Arie) Fein (1906-1993), native of Białystok, Poland. Arrived in Palestine in 1926. Studied art at the Bezalel School, and later at Paris's National School of Fine Arts (Beaux-Arts de Paris). Was twice awarded the Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture (1937 and 1944). The present portrait was on display at the exhibition entitled "Bat-Miriam, Portrait and Self-Portrait" (see below) at the Genia Schreiber (Tel Aviv) University Art Gallery in 1998. In the exhibition catalogue (see below), the curator Uzi Agassi had this to say about the work: "This painting is of a different character from his [Fein's] other paintings from the same period, and as such, it is of special interest. By 1947, the year he painted the portrait of Bat-Miriam, he had already overcome his 'naturalism complex, ' and after [absorbing] the influences of Fauvism, he went on to "Synthetic Constructivism", according to his own definition […]. The object of the painting – the figure of Bat-Miriam – was apparently the cause of his return to the naturalist style. Fein resorts to warm, dark colors in depicting her portrait; returning us, in a manner, to the words of the poet Rahel: 'It appears that just now / by the grace of bygone times… has she risen from the Bible.'" Reference (catalogue and exhibition): Uzi Agassi (curator), "Bat-Miriam, Portrait and Self-Portrait, " exhibition and exhibition catalogue, Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 1998, Hebrew.
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $300
Sold for: $1,125
Including buyer's premium
Avigdor Stematsky (1908-1989), Female Portrait. Oil pastel on paper. Signed. Approx. 48X34. Framed, 71X56 cm with frame (loss to lower part). Unexamined out of frame.
Avigdor Stematsky (1908-1989), an Israeli painter, a leading member of the New Horizons (Ofakim Hadashim) art movement. Was born in Odessa and grew up in a Zionist home. In 1921, his family immigrated to Palestine, settling in the Neve Shalom neighborhood of Tel-Aviv (his father, Zvi Steimatzky, opened a small bookshop on 21 Herzl St. – the first branch of the future Steimatzky bookstore chain). In 1926 he was accepted to Bezalel. In the early 1930s, he moved to Paris, studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and met the artists of the Paris School of Art, who greatly influenced his style. He was a member of the first group of artists who represented Palestine in an international exhibition – the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition. Upon his return to Palestine, he held his first solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum (1939), participated in the "Exhibition of Eight" at the HaBimah Theater (1942) and was awarded the Dizengoff Prize for his painting "View of Rechovot" (during these years he was forced to make a living by taking odd jobs: delivering newspapers and designing sets for Purim balls and movie posters). In 1945, he established the "Studio" art school with Yechezkel Streichman and in 1948 was one of the founders of the New Horizons group (alongside Streichman, Joseph Zaritsky, Arie Aroch and others), identified with the "lyrical abstract" style.
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $400
Unsold
Yehiel Krize (1909-1968), Figures. Oil on board. Signed. Approx. 46X35 cm, in a 72X61 cm frame. Minor blemishes to paint.
Yechiel Krize (1909-1968), born in Turek (Poland), immigrated to Palestine with his family in 1923. At first, he worked as his father's apprentice, painting houses, and in his twenties, was employed as a packer in citrus orchards. At that time, having no background in art, he started painting. Later, he studied at the studios of Avigdor Stematsky and Joseph Zaritsky, and in 1935, travelled to study art in Paris. During his stay in Europe, he worked in the artists' colony in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland. In 1947-1948, he was twice awarded the Dizengoff Prize for Painting. Krize was close to artists of the New Horizons movement, his style growing increasingly abstract over the years, especially after his seven-month stay in New York in 1958-1959. Nevertheless, he chose to work as an independent artist, not joining any group. Solo exhibitions of his work were held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, at the Artists' House in Tel Aviv and Haifa and elsewhere, but his works were also exhibited in the official New Horizons exhibition at the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, in 1963.
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $200
Unsold
Eliahu Sigard (Sigad) (1901-1975), Wedding. Oil on Masonite. Signed. 63X55 cm. Minor perforations and losses to board edges.
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $100
Sold for: $250
Including buyer's premium
Elhanan Halpern (1914-1995), Ein Gedi. Oil on canvas. Signed. 81X65 cm. Good condition.
Provenance: The Uzi Agassi Collection.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $200
Sold for: $525
Including buyer's premium
Two portfolios of prints hand-signed by Nahum Gutman. Israel, late 1970s.
1. Eight prints after drawings from the time of Israel's War of Independence. [Published by WIZO, 1978].
All prints hand-signed by Nahum Gutman, and numbered 120/180. Housed in original portfolio, with introductory page, a poetically written piece by poet Haim Gouri.
Enclosed: Photocopy of letter from the head of the Tel Aviv Branch of WIZO.
[8] loose plates + [2] ff., approx. 35X26 cm (plate size not uniform). Good condition. 2. "Nachum Gutman, 10 Etchings (Dry-Point) of Little Tel-Aviv." Israel: I.G.A. International Graphic Art Ltd., 1979. Hebrew and English.
Ten etchings by Nahum Gutman, housed in original portfolio. All etchings hand-signed in pencil by Nahum Gutman, and numbered AP 3/10.
[10] loose plates, approx. 37.5X35 cm (etchings in varying sizes), housed in printed cover and portfolio. Portfolio: 40X38 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes to portfolio.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue
Auction 84 - Jewish and Israeli History, Culture and Art
December 21, 2021
Opening: $100
Sold for: $325
Including buyer's premium
Ari (Erich) Glas (1897-1973) – Collection of prints and illustrations.
1-3. Three etchings. Signed in pencil. Two etchings titled (Hebrew) "Sheikh Jarrah" (neighborhood in Jerusalem) in pencil.
8.5X10 to 13X23 cm. Good condition. Stains. 4-13. Ten illustrations, probably for children's books.
Watercolor on paper. Signed (all but one).
12.5X13 to 25X32 cm. Good condition. Stains.
Category
Art – Old Masters, European and Israeli Art
Catalogue