Born in Lwów (Lemberg), Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Lviv, Ukraine), Wilhelm Wachtel studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and later in Munich. He lived in Palestine from 1936 to the outbreak of World War II, at which point he moved to the United States. Many of Wachtel’s existing pieces render Jewish scenes, both mundane and mythological. However, much of his oeuvre was lost during World War II.
Boy Holding a Ball is painted in the fauvist style for which Béla Czóbel was best known. It features the bright colors, flat paint areas, and bold outlines that characterize his early work. Czóbel…
In 1670, Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish community commissioned a new synagogue, which, when finished, was the largest in the world. The master mason Elias Bouman (ca. 1636–1686), a non-Jew, who had…