History Visual arts in Israel

félix bonfils

beduin violin players, 1880s



temple mount map , buildings, late 19th century

embroidery

private collection.

early art in land of israel decorative art of religious nature (primarily jewish or christian), produced religious pilgrims, export , local consumption. these objects included decorated tablets, embossed soaps, rubber stamps, etc., of decorated motifs graphic arts. in jewish settlements artists worked @ gold smithing, silver smithing, , embroidery, producing works in small crafts workshops. portion of these works intended amulets. 1 of best known of these artists, moshe ben yitzhak mizrachi of jerusalem made shiviti (or shivisi, in ashkenazic pronunciation, meditative plaques used in jewish communities contemplation on god s name) on glass , amulets on parchments, motifs such sacrifice of isaac, book of esther, , views of temple mount , western wall. objects of applied art produced @ torah ve-melakhah ( torah , work ) school founded in 1882 alliance israélite universelle. school opened departments production of art objects in neo-classical , baroque styles, produced combining manual labor modern machines.

a large body of artistic work produced european artists, christian painters, came document sites , landscapes of holy land . motive behind these works orientalist , religious , focused on documentation – first of painting , later of photography – of holy sites , way of life in orient, , on presentation of exotic people. photographs of holy land, served basis paintings, focused on documenting structures , people in full daylight, due limitations of photography @ time. therefore ethnographic approach in evidence in photographs, present static , stereotypical image of figures depict. in photographs of french photographer felix bonfils such as, example in prominent photographs of holy land in last decades of 19th century, see artificial desert background, in front of figures posed @ end of 19th century , beginning of 20th century, local photographers began appear, important of whom khalil raad, focused on ethnographic description of reality of holy land, in large part colonialistic. in addition there other photographers, many of them armenian, worked commercial photographers in land of israel , neighboring countries.

in 1920s, many jewish painters fleeing pogroms in europe settled in tel aviv.