Avigdor Stematsky

The Russian-born painter Avigdor Stematsky moved to Tel Aviv in 1920, beginning his formal art education at age eighteen while studying at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem. In the 1930s, Stematsky traveled to Paris, where he was profoundly influenced by the city’s avant-garde art scene. In 1948, he cofounded the Israeli painters group New Horizons, dedicated to abstract painting. While they did not endeavor to create a distinctly Israeli art, instead working within what they viewed as a universal artistic language, Stematsky and his fellow New Horizons painters became recognized as some of Israel’s most important artists.