Jewish Art Channel/Canal De Arte Judío

Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and Marathi Jewish Printing in India

The page seen above is from the rare printed books collection of the Valmadonna Trust Library in London.
The Valmadonna Collection of Hebrew and Jewish books from India is a unique and unparalleled resource for the study of oriental printing and lithography, Hebrew poetry and liturgical history, Eastern Judeo-Arabic literature, and the folklore traditions and vernacular writings of the Jews of South Asia. IDC Publishers will make the entire corpus of Indian Jewish literature accessible to researchers for the first time. The illustrations give us a precious glimpse into Indian Jewish life of that time.

Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, and Marathi Jewish Printing in India

Close up shown below:

Here are some haunting works by the Jewish artist Mordechai Levanon, 1901-1968. Born in Transylvania, Romania, Levanon immigrated to Israel in 1921, where he studied at the Bezalel Art Academy. Like so many of his fellow Israeli artists, Levanon was fascinated by the country's special light and the way it affects color. Thanks to his splendid body of work and his many paintings of the holy cities of Jerusalem and Sfad, Levanon is considered a major pioneer of Israeli art, and has even been called "the Israeli Van Gogh."

Chaim Soutine was born in Russia in 1893, he emigrated to France in 1913 and took up residence in Montparnasse. His best friend was Amedeo Modigliani, the Italian artist (also of Sephardic-Italian ancestry) who had reached Paris seven years earlier. A poor struggling artist obsessed with form and color, Soutine horrified his neighbors keeping a dead animal carcass in his studio so he could paint it. He remained relatively unknown until 1923, when an American visited his studio and bought 60 of his paintings. Soutine died in August of 1943 of a perforated ulcer.

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was an artist of Sephardic Marrano ancestry. He was born in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas (now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands), in 1830. He spent some time in Venezuela, then went to France in 1855. He studied and worked in Paris until 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War forced him to flee to England. When he returned a year later, his discovered that Prussian soldiers had destroyed much of his early work. He began a series of new and interesting paintings of French rural and urban life that eventually earned for him the title "Father of Impressionism." He was a fatherly figure who acted as mentor to such well-regarded painters as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas. Pissarro died in 1903. Though he sold few paintings in his lifetime, his works now sell in the U.S. for several million dollars each.
Interesting links of him are provided in the link list to the left.

The Spanish baroque artist Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez (1599-1660) was of Sephardic Marrano origin. Born in Seville, his father was a Portuguese Jew and his mother a Spanish aristocrat, and he was raised as a part of Jewish converso family. He studied art and made a name for himself in Seville, then went to Madrid in 1622, where he made a distinct impression on king Philip IV. He was eventually named as the king's artist and was given exclusive portrait rights to the king (other artists were not only excluded, but their paintings of the king were withdrawn from circulation).

Shraga Weil was born in 1918 in Nitra, Czechoslovakia. Before World War II he studied art at the National School of Arts in Prague. Later, after the war, he had further training at the Academy of Arts in Paris, then migrated to Israel. He worked throughout the '50s as a designer and illustrator for books. Then in the '60s and '70s he worked on several architectural designs, including the main entrances to the Knesset building and the President's residence. He also created ceramic walls for the great synagogue in Tel Aviv and painted wooden panels in the Israeli hall at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. His work is noted for its Biblical and Jewish folklore motives.

Ronen Verchik was born in 1961 in Tel Aviv. At an early age he developed an appreciation for art from his father, a sculptor and art collector. As a young man, his natural ability for painting began to show. Later, in his twenties, he met Alex Perez, one of the most well known artists in Israel.

Seeing an extraordinary talent, Perez recruited Verchik for his workshop, where he studied for four years. In this class he learned many techniques. During the same period, he studied sculpture with sculptor Nahom Inbar in Tel Aviv.

While developing his technique, he was also searching for ways to express himself artistically. In 1988 Verchik's painting technique changed, he began painting more freely and the texture in his paintings became richer and more significant as a result. In Verchik's paintings you can feel the texture of the paint on the surface, giving it more depth and character.

The artist has shown his work in several exhibitions in Tel Aviv, Rishon le Zion, and the U.S.A. He moved out of the city to a rural area in order to be close to nature, as he says, "to absorb energy from the environment". He lived for many years in Nehora village south of Tel Aviv where he taught painting and sculpture in his private studio, in the regional school, and in the settlements in the area. He is currently living in the United States with his wife and two children.

Shmuel Katz was born in Vienna in 1926. Because he was a Jew, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. But he managed to escape and spent the rest of World War II hiding in Hungary, after escaping from a concentration camp. At the end of the war, he tried to enter Palestine as an illegal immigrant, but was intercepted by the British and deported to Cyprus. With nothing else to fill the hours, Katz began drawing. He was quite a good draughtsman, and his work was exhibited. But when he was finally allowed to enter Israel, he put aside his art to fight in Israel's war for independence. It was only in the early fifties that Katz returned to art when he was asked to illustrate a children's magazine. His art style is rich in theme with a pronounced sense of perspective and figure modeling. He uses this distinctive personal style to show scenes of Jerusalem and modern Israel, baked in sunlight.

Mexican Artist Mario Mizrahi (Spanish Interview)

I wish to eliminate any potential misunderstanding. Mizrahi is a Jewish surname
which means literally in Hebrew "eastern", it is also
used as the name of a Jewish ethnic group (just like Ashkenazi or Sephardi) to describe Jews from Arab/and/ or muslim countries in the Middle East
(Turkey and Morroco are not really included in this category).The following Jews are: Iraqi Jews, Syrian
Jews, Lebanese Jews, Yemenite Jews, Persian Jews,
Afghan Jews, Bukharian Jews, Maghrebi Jews, Berber Jews, Kurdish Jews, and Mountain Jews.
This term however can be misleading because there
were Sephardim who on leaving Spain settled in Iraq,
Syria, and other such Middle Eastern countries.
Mizrahi is a surname found among some Sephardim.
This artist is obviously from Sephardic ancestry, though by his colorful yet somewhat irreverant paintings you can tell that Judaism has no place in
his life . It is also possible that he was born a Marrano (Crypto-Jew), and never decided to return to his Jewish roots.