The painter and decorative artist Ze’ev Raban (originally Wolf Rawicki) was born in Łódź, where he initially studied art; he continued his training in Munich and Brussels, where the influence of art nouveau was then at its zenith. He settled in Jerusalem in 1912 and joined the faculty of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts; most of the objects produced in its workshops between 1914 and 1929 were of his design. His style combined elements of art nouveau with motifs from traditional Syrian and Persian art. In addition to his striking and erotically charged art-nouveau works on biblical themes in a Jewish secular-national and Zionist vein, Raban also created the decorative elements for such well-known Jerusalem buildings as the King David Hotel and the YMCA, and designed a wide variety of everyday objects, including playing cards, banknotes, tourism posters, jewelry, commercial packaging, and Zionist insignia.
There have traditionally been two different interpretations of the biblical Song of Songs. It can be read as an erotic love poem or as a poem of yearning for the Land of Israel. Ze’ev Raban’s…
This trip abroad to study the function of women’s agricultural schools was accomplished via a partnership of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce with the Humanitarian Society, which, at the end…
Arnold Böcklin is dead—yet who among you knew that he lived? If I were to tell you that he was the man who knew how, with paintbrush dipped in colors upon a piece of canvas, to shake every heart…