| Mordecai Ardon מרדכי ארדון |
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| Born | July 13, 1896 Tuchów, Galicia, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | June 18, 1992 (aged 95) |
| Nationality | Israeli |
| Awards | Israel Prize (1963) |
Mordecai Ardon (Hebrew: מרדכי ארדון, July 13, 1896 – June 18, 1992), considered one of Israel's greatest painters.
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Ardon was born in 1896 in Tuchów, Galicia (then Austria-Hungary, now Poland), and immigrated to the then Mandate Palestine (later Israel) in 1933.
In He participated in the Venice Biennale of 1968.
Beginning in the 1950s Mordechai Ardon adopted a complex system of symbolic images in his paintings, taken from the Jewish Mystical tradition (Kabbalah), from the Bible and from a tangible reality. In his painting "Gates of Light", for example, he expressed "the inner mystery and timelessness of the landscape." His work seeks to impart a cosmic dimension to the present, linking it to antiquity and mystery. The same approach can be found in "At the Gates of Jerusalem" (1967), which shows the attempt to "convey his feelings about the cosmic significance of Israel’s return to the Old City of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War".[1] "Bird near a yellow wall" (1950) demonstrates his simplistic involvement with the Holocaust, a subject to which he was one of the few Israeli artists to devote a phase of his work, at that time.
As a teacher and director of the "New Bezalel", Ardon conveyed his sense of social involvement, his tendency towards Jewish mysticism and local mythology, and the combination of personal national symbols with reality-always stressing masterful technique. Pupils such as Avigdor Arikha, Naftali Bezem, Shraga Weil and Shmuel Boneh absorbed these influences and integrated them into their later work.
In contrast to Yosef Zaritsky, the father of the Universalist "Ofakim Hadasim" ("New Horizons") groop, Ardon was seen as the father of the Regional approach in Israeli art.
One of his most famous creations are the "Ardon Windows" (1980–1984), a set of large stained-glass windows displayed prominently in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, incorporating visual elements from the Kabbalah.
Ardon died in Jerusalem in 1992.
In 2006 his painting "The Woodpecker of Time" (1963) was sold at Christie's for 643,200$.