Bezalel school

The Bezalel academy was founded as an art movement in Israel in the late Ottoman empire and British Mandate periods. The name Bezalel was chosen from the bible, he was a master craftsman, specifically the chief artisan of the Tabernacle, a portable sanctuary built during the Israelites' journey through the desert. The school originally named for the Bezalel Art School, predecessor of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, it has been described as "a fusion of oriental art and Art Nouveau." Boris Schatz, the father of Israeli art, founded the Bezalel academy of art, design and architecture in 1906, in Jerusalem, Israel. e Haimed to establish an institution that combined education and craftsmanship, merging Eastern and Western cultures, a place to work and study.

History

Although Jewish art in Mandatory Palestine has a history that reaches back to at least the mid-19th century, the commonly held view when the Bezalel Art School was founded generally dismissed earlier works as being of little value. One author wrote that "every historical survey of contemporary Israeli art must begin with Boris Schatz and with the establishment of the Bezalel School." Another commented that "Schatz was first among the pioneers who attempted to create a Jewish Art, indeed a Palestinian Art". Yona Fischer has said that Bezalel is not the beginning of Jewish art and craft in Israel but that it is, considered within the historical context of Zionism, a movement that "divides past and future" of an emerging Israel "searching its own definition".