Creator Bio
Yitshak Frenkel (Alexandre Frenkel-Frenel)
1899–1981
The painter Yitshak Frenkel was born in Odessa, where he first studied painting. He came to Mandate Palestine in 1919, but then studied and painted in Paris from 1920 to 1925. When he returned to Palestine in 1925, he opened the Histadrut Art School in Tel Aviv. His work was closer to abstractionism than to the orientalism that was popular in interwar Palestine. Some consider him the first abstract Israeli artist.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Man with Torah
Frenkel, whose work was shaped by the School of Paris (École de Paris), played a key role in bringing modernism to Israeli art. Among his students were prominent members of what is known as the Land…