Pinchas Shaar: An Angel with Birds 1965/ Israeli Jewish Polish Symbolism Judaica

Description: Pinchas Shaar 1923, Lodz, Poland - 1996, Israel An Angel with Birds, 1965 Original Hand-Signed Oil on Canvas - Dated 1965 Artist Name: Pinchas Shaar Title: An angel with birds, 1965 Signature Description: Hand-signed in English and dated "1965" on recto lower right and on verso Technique: Oil on canvas Image Size: 92 x 60 cm / 36.22" x 23.62" inch Frame: Unframed, the painting comes complete with canvas stretcher but without a frame Condition: Very good condition Artist's Biography: Pinchas Shaar, (1923 - 1996), Painter. b. 1923, Poland. Immigrated to Israel 1956. Known for his illustrations to Israeli Hebrew literature. Died 1996. Studies Art Academy, Munich; Beaux Arts, Paris; Grande Chaumiere, Paris. Pinchas Shaar, painter and literature illustrator, was born in Lodz, Poland in 1923. His family history was Jewish and Polish which landed him in a concentration camp from 1939 to 1945. After the end of the war Shaar attended the Munich Academy of Art. Shaar got his first job in the art world as a theatrical set designer. Shaar also attended the Grand Chaumiere and the Academy des Beaux Artes, both in Paris. In 1956 Pinchas Shaar immigrated to Israel. Shaar became famous for depicting many facets of Hebrew culture. Pinchas Shaar passed away in 1996 in Israel.Selected Exhibitions 1998 Israel - Entre Reve et Realite, Musée Juif de Belgique, Brussels (Group Exhibition)1975 Let My People Go - Paintings by Pinhas Shaar,The Jewish Musuem, New York City 1972 Let My People Go, Beth Sholem Aleichem, Tel Aviv 1971 Israeli Art: Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Works, Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Group Exhibition) 1968 Galerie De Vuyst, Lokeren, Belgium 1967 Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels1965 The fire in the Torah, The Egmont Palace, Brussels, Belgium Galerie Breckpot, Antwerpen, Belgium Galerie Benezit, Paris 1964 Galerie Nova, Mechelen, Belgium 1962 Meltzer Gallery, New York Sisti Gallery, Buffalo 1961 Pinchas Shaar - Solo exhibition, Tel Aviv Museum of Art 1960 The Israeli Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, Italy (Group Exhibition) 1959 Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels 1958 Association of Engineers in Israel 1956 Galerie Benezit, Paris 1955 Haifa Museum of Modern Art 1953 Galerie Saint-Placide, Paris 1951 Mikra Studio Gallery, Tel Aviv 1947 Municipal Art Gallery, Munich 1939 Exhibition of the Polish Painters' Association, Academy of Fine Arts, Lodz, Poland. Pinchas Shaar was born in Poland as Pinchas Schwartz to a traditional family but with a free education. His father owned a carpentry shop and was chairman of the Jewish Carpenters' Association in Lodz. His mother was a housewife and was a relative of the painter Jankel Adler. As a teenager, he was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair movement. He painted and sketched during these years, and Yankel Adler, who visited his home, loved the paintings. He graduated from the Lodz Gymnasiya in 1938 and went on to study painting with Władysław Strzemiński (1893, Minsk, Belarus - 1952, Łódź, Poland), one of the greatest Polish painters. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the Polish army in the 18th Battalion. During the battles he was captured by the Germans but managed to escape to territory that was under Russian control. His mother and sister remained in Lodz to protect the family property. As the situation of the mother and sister worsened, Shaar, together with his father and brother, he decided to return to the Lodz ghetto to try to rescue his mother and sister. They managed to sneak into the ghetto, but could not get out, and were forced to stay in it. In the ghetto, Shaar worked as an artist in the Statistics Office, illustrating the Lodz ghetto stamps. When the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, Shaar managed to bring the family into a group of about 500 families left to clean up the ghetto. After about a month and a half, they were taken by train to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and then to the Königs Wusterhausen camp, where they remained until their liberation by the Russian army.After World War II he came to Germany in 1945, where he lived in a displaced persons (DP) camp. In 1947 he moved to Munich, where he joined the Yiddish Theater as a set painter. In 1947 he traveled to Paris, where he studied for two and a half years at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere. Shaar first visited Israel in 1949, and stayed in Israel for four months. He then immigrated to Israel in 1951. He continued to divide his time between Paris and Israel. In 1956 he signed a contract with the Benezit Gallery in Paris for four years. At the same time, he painted backdrops for plays for the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv. In 1959, he received a commission for a mosaic about the ascension of Elijah the prophet, made entirely of stones from Israel, to the entrance to the Shalom Center Reform synagogue in Chicago. In 1963 he used the proceeds from his exhibitions in the United States to buy a studio in Jaffa, where he opened a permanent exhibition. In 1975, Shaar moved with his family to Manhattan, where he lived until his death. His WorkPinchas Shaar's paintings excel in childlike innocence. The themes of his paintings stem from the depths of the childish imagination, which has not been spoiled by the encounter with progress. He combines sentimental poetry and humor, so that the paintings express sadness and joy, both playfulness and seriousness. The paintings are usually based on a small story, usually with a biblical source or from Jewish folklore, sometimes also from Oriental folklore. In many cases animals take up the center, and the people appear with heads cut in a straight line, as if they were wearing a mask, so the gaze is concentrated on their eyes. The paintings are two-dimensional, and the perspective loses its meaning in them, like a rug resurrecting in bright and varied colors. In addition to painting, Shaar also used to create tapestries, iron moldings, mosaics and reliefs. Shaar said on his work: "A person must continue and build on previous generations. I come to the audience with my world. He did not exist until I took him out of the gut." Shaar added: "True, great art always moves away from the real, and strives for the wondrous, magical side of life."Additional Information:‘The Art of Pinchas Shaar – from the Biblical World to the New World and Back’ The Castel Museum showcases Pinchas ShaarCastel was described after his death in 1991 by art historian Gideon Ofrat as a member of the “heroic period of Israeli modernism.”By HAGAY HACOHEN The Jerusalem Post, DECEMBER 13, 2023In 2008, Bilhah, the widow of noted Israeli artist Moshe Castel acquiesced to move both her home and the adjacent museum dedicated to her husband’s art from the Old City of Safed to the Jerusalem suburb of Ma’ale Adumim. While Castel’s murals hang in the Knesset, the Binyanei Hauma Convention Center, the Rockefeller Center in New York, and the official residence of the president of Israel in Jerusalem, the Castel Museum hosts nearly all the other important works by the acclaimed artist.Castel was described after his death in 1991 by art historian Gideon Ofrat as a member of the “heroic period of Israeli modernism.” Ofrat added that Castel was a victim of “violence by art critics and a withdrawal by the cultural establishment.”“He remained singular,” Ofrat told art writer Ruthi Regev, “without pupils.” The basalt artwork at the President’s Residence, Glory Kotel for Jerusalem, is familiar to anyone following the news. This is because it has been shown in the background of every government inauguration press photo since Menachem Begin.Like "using a time machine"“When visitors come,” Moshe Castel Museum curator Alek D. Epstein told The Jerusalem Post, “they can go back and watch works of art shown at famous exhibitions as if they were using a time machine.”“What we have here,” he pointed out, “doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. In one spot we have 65 years of accumulated artistic labor.” “There will always be script,” former Moshe Castel Museum CEO Eli Raz explained about Castel’s mature paintings, “because everything in them comes from the written word.”Castel used Arabic, ancient Hebrew, Cuneiform, and other regional writing systems to reach a highly personal aesthetic. The textual density in his work is awe-inspiring. Most viewers, except perhaps biblical archeology professors, will not be able to read them. It is only after a while that the eye begins to notice plants, a priest, human figures, and women. The heavy paintings, usually made with crushed minerals, transmit a unique energy. They might resemble the masculine drip action paintings of Jackson Pollock, but unlike those, these are highly structural. The movement in Castel’s paintings is divided into sections and is restrained. The rich hues Castel labored over, grinding mineral samples with meticulous precision, are reminiscent of how Anish Kapoor lavishes pigments on his sculptures to offer a taste of the sublime, even while Kapoor’s outlook differs from Castel’s.For example, Kapoor purchased the exclusive rights to use Vantablack pigment. Said to be the blackest black ever produced, Vantablack is used to prevent light from entering telescopes in space. In contrast, Castel ground his pigments by hand and took them from the very earth of the land he felt connected to.“His understanding of Jacob’s Ladder,” said Raz, “was not like the Western one. Christian tradition depicted a ladder on which angels ascend and descend. Castel followed a unique, Jewish understanding, according to which man himself is the ladder connecting heaven and earth.”The collection offers a deeply satisfying journey that begins with Castel’s paintings from the Bezalel Art Academy of 1920s Jerusalem, continues with works created in France, moves on to his involvement with the Ofakim Hadashim (New Horizons) art group in the 1940s, and depicts his role in the foundation of the Safed Artists’ Quarter after the 1948 War of Independence.According to Raz, French friends of Castel teased the artist by saying that even when he paints French models he is unable to restrain himself from painting Jerusalem-like buildings in the background. While Bilhah Castel’s home is not usually open to the public, Castel Museum CEO Haggai Sasson opened it up for our tour. Castel’s widow oversaw the work carried out to build the museum and lived alongside it. The charming residence is furnished with elegant French furniture and offers an intimate look into the life of the artist. “It is possible to visit the home upon special request,” Sasson explained.Thanks to the generosity of art collector Zohar Bernard Cohen, the museum now exhibits showing never-seen-before works by Pinchas Shaar. Born in Poland and of the same generation as Castel, Shaar was a brilliant Jewish artist who survived the Lodz Ghetto, lived in Tel Aviv, painted in New York, and is now sadly known only to a handful of art lovers.Shaar’s first painting after his liberation was created with paint and canvas given to him by the UN International Refugee Organization and is now in the Yad Vashem collection. It depicts a Jewish refugee sitting on whatever meager possessions he was able to save. In Israel, Shaar befriended Naftali Bezem. Bezem, sent to Israel from Poland the age of 14 by his parents before the Holocaust, designed the Palmach symbol as well as the ceiling of Beit HaNassi.He worked as a theater set designer and was one of the first artists to open a studio in Jaffa. The paintings on display at the Castel Museum are vivid and imaginative. Created in New York during the 1970s and 1980s, they express a deeply rooted sense of Jewish visual imagination.One unusual work, a large diptych depicting a golden chariot pulled by a flaming horse as the painter behind it soars, is breathtaking. Its sheer delight in the creative act, the painterly genius that delivers in an instant a powerful emotion, is worth the trip. In a country where the city of Bat Yam destroyed paintings by Issachar Ber Ryback after it had kept them in a water tower for decades; and Ashdod made no effort to hold on to the Kenda and Jacob Bar-Gera collection of art made by persecuted artists, Ma’ale Adumim has risen to the task of creating and maintaining a museum which honors an original Israeli painter and his generation of Jewish artists. Payment Methods: PayPal, Credit Card (Visa, Mastercard), Bank Cheque. If you wish to send a personal cheque, please note that the item will not be shipped until the cheque clears. Shipping&Handling: All items are sent through registered mail or by EMS - Fast delivery service, both operated by the Israel Post (up to 4-5 business days), depends on the weight and measures of the purchased item. You may add insurance for the item with an additional fee. Please e-mail us for other shipping methods. 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Price: 1800 USD

Location: IL

End Time: 2024-10-09T22:01:01.000Z

Shipping Cost: 130 USD