Itshak Holtz

Itshak Holtz
יצחק הולץ
Born Itshak Jack Holtz
1925 (age 89–90)
Skierniewice, Poland
Nationality Polish, Israeli, American
Education Bezalel Academy of Art and Design
Art Students League of New York
National Academy of Design
Known for Painting
Movement Genre art, Impressionism, Realism
Spouse(s) Gertrude Ruth Holtz (Beck)
Website
itshakholtz.net

Itshak Jack Holtz (Hebrew: יצחק הולץ‎; also known as Itzhak Holtz and Issac Holtz) (born 1925)[1] is a Polish-born and an Israeli and American Orthodox Jewish artist, who is best known for his paintings and drawings that depict traditional scenes of Jewish life.

Early life and education

The youngest of four children, Holtz was born and spent his early childhood in Skierniewice, Poland, a small town near Warsaw. His father was a hat maker and a furrier.[1] In 1935, prior to World War II, when Holtz was ten years old, his family moved to Jerusalem, Israel, where they settled in the Geula neighborhood near Meah Shearim.[2][3]

Itzhak Holtz's passion for art began early. When he was five years old, in Poland, his father first drew a picture of a horse and sled in the snow for him. The young Holtz looked at the drawing and studied it in wonderment. From that moment on, Holtz remembers, he constantly begged his father to draw for him. His enthusiasm for art grew and Holtz longed to study art. In 1945, he enrolled at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, where he primarily studied lettering and poster work in a program geared toward commercial art.[1][4] Holtz became interested in painting, prompting him to move to New York City in 1950[3][5] to study at the Art Students League of New York under Robert Brackman and Harry Sternberg, and then at the National Academy of Design under Robert Philipp.[6]

Art career

Holtz has stated that his artwork, which primarily but not exclusively, depict scenes of Jewish spirituality and tradition, is driven by his Orthodox Jewish beliefs: "You have to live that religious life to fully capture it on canvas."[4] He has been classified in the school of genre painting, often depicting street scenes of ordinary people in everyday Jewish life in the back alleys and markets of Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Me'ah Shearim and Geula;[7] and in New York neighborhoods and hamlets such as Monsey, Boro Park and Williamsburg.[5][6] Along with street scenes, his work includes portraits of scribes, tailors, cobblers and fishmongers, and images such as shtetls, lighthouses, and wedding scenes.[1][6][8] He started out painting mostly portraits in order to support his family, before expanding to include street scenes.[1] Holtz has experimented in the abstract, but then reverted to representational and figurative art to which he devoted himself exclusively.[5] His Israeli street scenes are said to combine “an affectionate recollection of the past with the brilliance of the color of modern Israel.”[5]

Holtz has stated that he struggled at first when he arrived to the USA because of financial reasons and because he only knew Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew, but then made good ties with his instructor Robert Philipp who helped him make friends and referred him to paint portraits.

Examples of Holtz's work throughout the years include: Yerusalem Wedding (2010), depicting a Chuppa in Jerusalem on early evening, oil on canvas; The Funeral(1966), depicting five stoic Hasidim carrying a body on a bier over to a gravesite, with the people behind them crying, in charcoal on paper and oil on canvas; Rejoicing (1974), an image of religious men dancing, in felt pen and marker on paper; and the oil painting Shamash Learning in Shul (2003), a portrait of a pious Jew studying the Talmud inside a claustrophobic synagogue scene.[6]

Throughout the years Holtz has created hundreds of works in many art mediums, including, genre scenes, portraits, still lifes and landscape scenery, his works are sought after by art collectors worldwide, and he has been called the greatest living Jewish artist.[9] It is said that no artist ever explored the Jewish subject like Holtz. Today some of his oil paintings have been commanding over $100,000.[1]

Style and technique

Itshak Holtz, Yerusalem Wedding
Oil on canvas, Jerusalem, 2010
Itshak Holtz Signature

Holtz creates his scenes after researching locations, and often uses locals as models.[6] He paints slowly and with great care, but with a swift Impressionistic style. The people in his portraits and scenes are generally more cheerful and optimistic than standard portraits of Hassidic individuals.[5] He paints oils and watercolors, and also does felt pen, pastel, marker, ink and charcoal drawings, as well as woodcuts.[1][8][10] His oil paintings typically have a brown hue, while his work with felt pen is often in sepia tones,[5] and on some of his works he used very bright colors, with a strong emphasis on the interplay of light and shadow.[5] He is heavily influenced by the ancient staircases and alleyways of Jerusalem, with its modest religious population, which has made a strong impression on him in his youth,[1] the streets of Tzfat,[4] and the works of Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer and Peter Bruegel,[5] as well as Jewish artists Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Leonid Pasternak and Isidor Kaufmann have had a strong influence on him. He has said that realism is the best way he can express himself.[5]

American author, art historian and critic Alfred Werner wrote about Holtz:

Itshak Holtz draws and paints what he loves, the fascinating Old World types in Jerusalem or New York; the few small old houses and narrow streets still left in modern countries such as the United States and the new Israel; and the landscape of the Holy Land (to which he came from Poland as a boy in 1935 and where he spent fifteen years). This familiar world of experience he conjures up with the technique that he acquired at the Bezalel Art School of Jerusalem, and subsequently at New York's Art Students' League and National Academy, and that he has been refining through unrelenting application. With disarming honesty, he draws and paints the subject matter he cherishes. He tries to create convincing illusions of existing form and texture, of the faces of real people, of the moods of the city, of places we tend to overlook. But his swift pencil, his brisk, easy brush are not confined to simple narration. Close examination of his offerings reveals that his works are based on a thoughtful Organization of all pictorial Clements. One finds a subtle planometric composition, a careful orchestration of pigments, demonstrating that, far from being a counterfeiter of reality, Holtz always endeavors to work out, beforehand, the genuine aesthetic Problems that intrigue him. At his best, Holtz is also trying to bring into focus important details, while omitting others that might detract from the solidity of composition. What he is after, in short, is a poetic intensification of reality, by availing himself fully of the spirit lacking even in the most complicated machine - the mind and the soul of man. He seeks to give us authentic people, and, if there are many of them, he groups them with an artful plausibility, with careful consideration for space, depth and the play of light, in order to satisfy his own creative yearnings no less than the customer's taste for the unpretentiously charming and quaint. What pleases me most are his physically small renderings of old buildings in Brooklyn or the Lower Eastside. Simple, unpretentious edifices, with a haunting quality, like these are still to be found in certain sections of American cities. Yet few men have the eyes he has to perceive the strange beauty in those combinations of horizontals and verticals, in those red, brown and black rectangles enlivened, now and then, by tiny figures of humans or by patches of snow. Intrigued as he is with unglamorous everyday sights rather than with exceptional splendor, he presents the moody world he knows with the means at his disposal, especially an unmatched directness of Observation. Hence, these small oils have both vitality and weight. They suggest a sensitive man of intelligence, capable of viewing our world with tender love - and that is no mean achievement today.[11]

Exhibitions

Some of Holtz's past exhibitions include:

Awards and Honors

Influence and Legacy

Holtz's art represents and reveals the contemporary Jewish life with an important link to its past, his art of Jewish subjects has influenced many Jewish artists like Eli Frucht[15] and David Segal[16] to follow and explore this Jewish genre.

Personal life

Following his graduation from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Holtz married Ruth Beck in 1951.[3] They have two children, Arie and Aliza.[1] For much of their time together, their primary residence was in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood.[3] Starting in the late 1960s, they maintained homes in both New York and Jerusalem.[6]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Dovid Margolin, “Gazing Toward Yerushalayim: The life and art of Itshak Holtz,” Inyan, August 22, 2011, pp. 30-35.
  2. ↑ Chana Ya'ar, “High-End Hassidic Art Gallery Opens in Brooklyn,” Arutz Sheva, May 17, 2012.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Sergey Kadinsky, “Elderly Artist, environmentalist, young families fly with Nefesh B’Nefesh,” The Jewish Star, June 23, 2010.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 “Brooklyn, NY – Crown Heights Welcomes Opening Of Hasidic Fine Art Gallery,” Vos Iz Neias?, May 21, 2012.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 Nathan Ziprin, “An Artist In Israel,” Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, January 12, 1968, p. 6.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 Richard McBee, “Itshak Holtz: Jewish Genre Painting,” The Jewish Press, July 4, 2003.
  7. ↑ “Itshak Holtz,” Alexander Gallery. Retrieved February 4, 2014.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Stephen Nessen, “Brooklyn’s Hasidic Art Scene Expands with New Gallery,” WNYC, May 17, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Artist Bios," Belmont Galleries. Accessed May 14, 2014.
  10. ↑ Sonja Sharp, “Crown Heights Welcomes Opening of First Hasidic Art Gallery,” DNAinfo New York, May 17, 2012.
  11. ↑ "Archives".
  12. ↑ Art Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Itshak J. Holtz: December 3-24, 1967, Theodor Herzl Institute, 1967.
  13. ↑ Itshak Jack Holtz, The World of Itshak Holtz: A Twentieth Century Genre Painter: October, 1992 – July, 1993, New York: Yeshiva University, 1992.
  14. ↑ Rose Kleiner, “Jewish plays, art exhibits are offered for visitors to New York this fall,” Canadian Jewish News, November 4, 1982, p. 47.
  15. ↑ Eli Frucht: Jewish Artist
  16. ↑ David Segal: Fine Art Judaica/Portraiture. Accessed May 14, 2014.

External links