Ze'ev Raban
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Ze’ev Raban (1890-1970) was a leading painter, decorative artist, and industrial designer of the Bezalel school style, and was one of the founders of the Israeli art world.
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[edit] Life
Raban was born Wolf Rawicki in Łódź, Congress Poland, and began his studies there. He continued his studies in sculpture and architectural ornamentation at a number of European art academies. These included the School of Applied Art in Munich at the height of the Jugendstil movement, the neo-classical studio of Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and the Royal Academy of Art, Brussels, then a center of Art Nouveau, under symbolist and idealist artists Victor Rosseau and Constant Montald.
Under the influence of Boris Schatz, the founder of the Bezalel Academy, Raban moved to the land of Israel in 1912 during the the wave of immigration known as the Second Aliyah. He joined the faculty of the Bezalel school, and soon took on a central role there as a teacher of repoussé, painting, and sculpture. He also directed the academy's Graphics Press and the Industrial Art Studio. By 1914, most of the works produced in the school's workshops were of his design. He continued teaching until 1929.[1]
In 1921, he participated in the historic art exhibition at the Tower of David, the first exhibit of Hebrew artists in Palestine, which became the first of a yearly series of such exhibits.
[edit] Works
Raban is regarded as a leading member of the Bezalel art style, in which artists portrayed both Biblical and Zionist themes in a style influenced by the European jugendstil (similar to Art Noveau) and by traditional Persian and Syrian styles. Exemplars of this style are Rabban's illustrated editions of the of Book of Ruth, Song of Songs, Book of Job, Book of Esther, and the Passover Hagadah.[1]
Like other European art nouveau artists of the period such as Alphonse Mucha Raban combined commercial commissions with uncommissioned paintings. Raban designed the decorative elements of such important Jerusalem buildings as the King David Hotel, the Jerusalem YMCA [2], and Bikkur-Cholim Hospital. He also designed a wide range of day-to-day objects, including playing cards (in the spade suit, the King is Ahasuerus, the Queen is Esther, and the joker is Haman), commercial packaging for products such as Hanukkah candles and Jaffa oranges, bank notes, tourism posters, jewelry, and insignia for Zionist institutions.
Raban also designed a wide range of Jewish objects, including Hanukkah menorahs, temple windows, and Torah arks.[3]
[edit] Notes
[edit] Further reading
- Goldfine, Gil. “Zeev Raban and the Bezalel style,” Jerusalem Post , 2001-14-12
- Raban Remembered: Jerusalem's Forgotten Master, Essays and Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Yeshiva University Museum, December 1982
- Batsheva Goldman Ida, Ze'ev Raban, A Hebrew Symbolist. Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2001
- Cohen, Nurit Shilo. The "Hebrew Style" of Bezalel, 1906-1929. The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol. 20. (1994), pp. 140-163
- Manor, Dalia. “Biblical Zionism in Bezalel Art,” Israel Studies 6.1 (2001) 55-75
