Boris Schatz

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Boris Schatz
Boris Schatz

Boris Schatz (Kaunas, Lithuania, 1867–Denver, Colorado, USA, 1932) was a Lithuanian artist and sculptor, who founded what is now known as the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

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[edit] Biography

Schatz's father, a teacher in a cheder (a religious school), sent him to study in a yeshiva in Vilnius, Lithuania, but Schatz left the yeshiva a short time later and cut all ties with his family so that he could study painting and sculpture in the in Vilnius, 1882–1887, and Warsaw, Poland, 1888–1889. In 1889, he moved to Paris (there until 1895) so that he could study at the Académie Cormon and with some of the noted artists there, including Mark Antokolski.

In 1895, Schatz accepted an invitation from Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria to become the official court sculptor and to establish that country's Royal Academy of Art. In 1900, he received a gold medal for his statue, Bust of an Old Woman.

Three years later, in 1903, he met Theodor Herzl and became an ardent Zionist. At the Fifth Zionist Congress of 1901, he proposed the idea of creating a Jewish school for crafts and the arts. In 1906 he founded an art center in Jerusalem, which was later named "Bezalel" after Bezalel Ben Uri, the biblical artisan who designed the Tabernacle and its ritual objects. In the following years, Schatz organized exhibitions of his students' work in Europe and the United States; they were the first international exhibitions of Jewish artists from Palestine.

Schatz, known to be fascinating, tempestuous, and visionary, wrote in his will: "To my teachers and assistants at Bezalel I give my final thanks for their hard work in the name of the Bezalel ideal. Moreover, I beg forgiveness from you for the great precision that I sometimes demanded of you and that perhaps caused some resentment ... The trouble was that Bezalel was founded before its time, and the Zionists were not yet capable of understanding it." Schatz's will was publicized for the first time in 2005.

Due to Bezalel's financial difficulties, it was closed in 1929. While fundraising in the USA for the school, Schatz died. His body was brought back to Jerusalem and buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. However, the institution was reopened posthumously, in 1935, as the New Bezalel School for Arts and Crafts.

The artists in the Schatz family abounded. There was Boris himself, his daughter daughters Zahara Schatz (1916–1999), son Bezalel Schatz (1912–1978), nicknamed Lilik, and Bezalel's wife Louise (1915–1997). Testament is the 1955 Israeli Prize for Art to Zahara in recognition of the whole Schatz family.

The themes for most of Boris Schatz's artwork are based on the Bible and represent the rebirth of the Jewish people. The school he founded as well as his daughter Zahara and son, the child prodigy Bezalel, turned their backs on the founder/father's predilection for Romantic Classicism and his development of a Jewish Eretz-Israel style. Bezalel Schatz became successful, lived in California in the 1940s, was a brother-in-law of Henry Miller for a time. But, having returned to Israel in 1951 with accomplished painter/wife Louise, Bezalel Schatz was little regarded in Israel. However, Zahara and Bezalel retained their father's dualism for pursuing both fine art and craft (or design).

[edit] Prizes

  • 1898 silver medal in Science and Art, Sofia, Bulgaria
  • 1900 gold medal for Bust of an Old Woman
  • 1900 silver medal at Exposition Internationale, Paris
  • 1904 silver medal at 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

[edit] Publications by Boris Schatz

  • On Art, Artists and their Critics (in Hebrew), 1924.
  • The Rebuilt Jerusalem: The Rebuilt Reality (in Hebrew), Jerusalem: Bezalel Academy, 1924.

[edit] References

  • Schatz, Boris (1925). Boris Schatz His Life & Work a Monograph, Jerusalem: B'nai Bezalel. ISBN 1-135-29826-2.
  • J. Klausner (1927). Boris Schatz : 31 oil paintings (in English and Hebrew), Jerusalem, [n.p.].
  • Nurit Shilo-Cohen, ed. (1983). "Betsal'el" shel Shats, 1906-1929 / Bezalel, 1906-1929, translated from Hebrew into English by Esther Rosalind Cohen, Jerusalem: Israel Museum.
  • Yigal Zalmona (1985). Boris Schatz (in Hebrew), Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House Ltd.
  • Nurit Shilo Cohen (1994). "The 'Hebrew Style' of Bezalel, 1906–1929", Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, vol. 20, pp. 140–163.
  • Dana Gilerman (5 January 2006). "Prof. Schatz's wayward children," Haaretz newspaper.
  • Meir Ronnen (20 July 2006). "The last Schatz," The Jerusalem Post.

[edit] External links