Landscape in the Galilee.

PALDI, ISRAEL

c. 1920

circa 1920

Watercolor and oil on board. Signed by artist, lower left (in English) and lower right (in Hebrew).

Born in the Ukraine, Israeli Paldi (Feldman, 1892-1979) moved to Eretz Israel in 1909 to attend the Bezalel School of Art, before finishing his studies at the Staatliche Kunstakademie, Munich. Dr. Haim Gamzu’s description of Paldi encapsulates the artist’s major thematic concerns and sources of inspiration: “Paldi was one of those early artists who sought their new path by identification with the singular life and living of Israel, both its Oriental and modern aspects, yet by looking at the through the eyes of an expressionist painter” (Gamzu, Painting and Sculpture in Israel (1958) p. 53). This important early painting was produced at the height of the Eretz Israel Movement, during a period in which a number of Israeli (but mostly foreign-born) artists, using quasi-naive styles, strove to capture the sense of optimism and liberation felt by Zionist settlers during the 1920’s. This was the period of the now legendary “Tower of David” exhibitions held in the Citadel in Jerusalem, in which avant-garde artists such as Paldi made their fist major impact on the public. Exhibited: Bezalel National Museum, 1934 (label on reverse). The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Twenties in Israeli Art, 1982.