GliksbergKrakauerLevanon

  • Issue: February 1978
  • Artists: M. Levanon (IL 4.40) / L. Krakauer (IL 3.80) / H. Glicksberg (IL 3.00)
  • Stamp size: 51.4 x 40 mm
  • Plate no.: 527 - 529
  • Sheet of 15 stamps Tabs: 5
  • Printers: E. Lewin-Epstein Ltd. / Government Printers (IL 3.80)
  • Method of printing: Photolithography / Photogravure (IL 3.80)

Haim Gliksberg (1904-1970)

Haim Gliksberg, the Israeli painter, born in Pinsk, developed during the twenties and thirties a style of portrait and landscape painting steeped in the tradition of the French schools. Gliksberg, however, unlike the other painters of his epoch, never visited France.

He was born in Pinsk and.received a religious education in the "cheder" and Yeshiva of Odessa. He became acquainted with French art when living for a short while in Moscow in the year 1924. There he saw the major collections of the Russian kings and nobles who were influenced by French painting.

In 1925 he emigrated to Israel and held an exhibition of his landscapes and portraits of intellectuals at the "Lemel" school. It was at this exhibition that he met Bialik. The two became firm friends and Bialik joined the company of men of letters with whom Gliksberg associated and even painted.

Gliksberg was among the first Israeli artists whose works were built on the composition and thickness of the paint and the various possibilities offered by variations in brushstroke. He stands quite apart from the other painters of the twenties who did not concern themselves with abstract artistic values. In the final analysis. Israeli art developed in the direction pioneered by Gliksberg. His picture "A Street in Jerusalem" is typical of his landscapes of the twenties.

Gliksberg was, throughout his life, involved in the cultural life of Israel. He was one of the founders of the Association of Painters and Sculptors, taught painting, wrote an auto-biography and even wrote a book on his friend Bialik. Gliksberg held many exhibitions at Israeli museums, represented Israel at the 1958 Biennale and was thrice awarded the "Dizengoff Prize" for painting and sculpture.

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Leopold Krakauer (1890-1954)

Leopold Krakauer, the Israeli architect and artist, born in Vienna, is known for his landscapes and sketches of thistles which combine a naturalistic approach with a tendency to emphasise their expressionistic aspects.

Krakauer, like that other Jerusalem landscape artist Anna Ticho, started his professional career in Vienna. He emigrated to Israel after having learned the basic principles of academic sketching in the course of his studies in Vienna where he was personally involved in Austrian and German expressionist circles.

Upon reaching Jerusalem he ceased sketching for a number of years and spent his time getting to know his new surroundings. His first sketches in Palestine which date from the late twenties, already include the subject which was to become a dominant theme of his work - the Judean Hills and the Jerusalem area - but in these works there were still to be found strong traces of German expressionism. It was only at the end of the thirties that he attained that style which most suited his temperament and feeling for the landscapes that he portrayed. He sketched in black chalk on white paper, sometimes using coloured paper, mainly blue, on which he sketched the countryside bathed in a mysterious moonlight. His works are based on very short strokes by which he emphasised the rhythm of the countryside the monotony of which is occasionally broken by an emphasised line - its barreness expressed by the kind of line employed - short, dry and unembellished.

During the final years of his life he did a lot of sketching, mainly of thistles. It was natural for him to choose the thistle as the plant which best expressed the Israeli landscape to which he was so attached. It may be that it was even connected with the type of architecture that he created - functional, simple and unembellished. Krakauer's thistles are among the best known of Israeli sketches. In his sketches he managed to capture a wide range of expressions and moods. In some of his sketches of thistles the border between realism and surrealism becomes blurred and the plants suddenly take on animal or even human form. His works clearly reveal his identification with the subject and show that these subjects, their rhythms and his special feeling for naturalness represent the essence of Leopold Krakauer's spiritual world.

The artist's works are to be found in the museums of England, Austria, Holland and Israel.

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Mordekhai Levanon (1901-1968)

Mordekhai Levanon is known as a painter of Israel landscapes who chose a style of his very own. Most of his works reproduce the surroundings of the holy cities of Jerusalem and Zefat and in their colouring and form they catch the very spirit of Jewish history.

Mordekhai Levanon, the son of a rabbi in a village in Transylvania, came to Israel when he was 20 years old. Before immigrating, his knowledge of the Holy Land was drawn from the stories in the Bible, and once settled in his new home, his spiritual appreciation of the land merged with the physical aspects of the landscape.

It was this that brought him to develop a unique style in which he took a landscape and in transferring it on to canvas, changed its colours and its perspective so that it no longer looked real, but took on a dream-like appearance, full of a sense of mystery as in some ecstatic vision.

He employed bright colours and broke the laws of perspective in such a manner that near and distant objects swallow each other up and in his landscapes the laws of gravity seem not to hold true. The author Haim Hazaz, writing about Levanon's holy cities said "Here, no object is a separate entity. Everything is merged and jumbled together, object on object, body on body, without scale or form, giving an overall stormy effect". Levanon began life in the Holy Land living as a pioneer, working for many years as a farm labourer and later as a building worker. The art of painting which he had begun to learn from his brother in Roumania he put aside for a while, only to take it up again, until he finally gave up all other work and devoted himself wholly to art. Levanon represented Israel three times at the Biennale and held numerous exhibitions at museums in Israel.

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Paintings