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.