Henry Miller. Into the Night Life. Stencils created and applied throughout by Bezalel Schatz.

“This book is entirely a serigraph, or silk screen production, conceived at Big Sur, California. Sixteen months were required to bring it forth. With the exception of the text, which is originally from Henry Miller’s Black Spring, and which was written in his own hand, this book is the creation of Bezalel Schatz” (Introduction). Bezalel (Lilik) Schatz (1912-78) was an Israeli artist, son of Boris Schatz, founder of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem. He attended the Gymnasia in Jerusalem and at age 14 completed his studies at the Bezalel School of Art. Following his father’s death in 1932, Bezalel left Israel for a period of some two decades. He spent four years studying at the Grand Chaumiere Academy in Paris and then moved to the West Coast of the United States. He moved back to Israel in 1952, initially taking up residence in the Schatz family historic home in Jerusalem, before settling in the artists’ village of Ein Hod. Despite his long absence from Israel and his conceptual conflicts with its’ artists, Schatz represented his native country at Venice’s 1954 Biennale and overall contributed significantly to Israel’s aesthetic environment and the development of the fine arts. Bezalel Schatz had proposed an art-book collaboration idea to Henry Miller in 1945. This would become the present limited edition publication, “Into The Nightlife.” Miller and Schatz subsequently become life-long friends, and later brothers-in-law, when Miller married the sister of Schatz’s wife.