Shabbat in Safed.

Born into a distinguished rabbinic family of Spanish-Castillian origin resident for generations in Hebron, Moshe Elazar Castel was born in Jerusalem in 1909 and studied in his father’s yeshiva before attending the Bezalel School of Art. His teacher, Shmuel Ben-David, encouraged Castel to study art in Paris where he arrived in 1927 and stayed for more than a decade before returning to Eretz Israel and settling in the historic town of Safed. Castel’s artistic style combines European Expressionism with Eastern motifs that developed into ‘Canaanite art,’ often incorporating ancient scripts. The interior scene of the present lot is typical of Castel’s Safed period, utilizing thick impasto to echo the dark cavernous Sabbath dining area. Castel later co-founded the New Horizons group (Ofakim Hadashim) along with many of the artists featured in this auction, including: Yosef Zaritsky, Yehezkel Streichman and Marcel Janco. <<Provenance: >>Commissioned by Mrs. Esther Sincoff and gifted to B’nai Jeshurun Synagogue, New York, 1940. Purchased from BJS by Stanley I. Batkin, 1987.