Medium: Lithograph Edition 33/100

Signed: Lower Right

Date Created:

Dimensions: 19.5x27.25 inches

Dimensions with Frame: 29 1/4 x 21 1/4"

Condition: Excellent

Provenance: Estate of Daniel Friedenberg

Biography of the Artist:

Mordecai Ardon was born Max Bronstein in 1896 in Tuchow, Poland. He studied art under Klee, Itten and Kandinsky at the Weimar "Bauhaus" and the technique of drawing with Prof. Max Doerner at the Munich Academy of Art. After teaching in Itten's school of art in Berlin, he emigrated to Israel in 1933 where he taught at the Belazel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem. He became director of the school in 1940 and Art Advisor to the Israeli Minister of Education in 1952. Jaacov Agam was among his students.

The artist had a turbulent life as actor, revolutionary, Bauhas disciple and teacher. Ardon's paintings have universal and immediate appeal. They are known for their gemlike colorshnical brilliance and great variety of mood, ranging from the playfully ironic to the mysterious and pensive. The years of his artistic maturation were in Jerusalem, where his stylistic evolution from realism to abstraction was fully realized.

Ardon's paintings are not created by intellectual decisions and technical procedures alone. He speaks of the "hidden spark", which appears suddenly in the midst of working, all his calculations. Bringing the painting to life with his brush and colors, Ardon exalts all creation. Whether he paints leaf, stone, sun, moon, wind or rain, the image is never merely a depiction of outer reality but a revelation of its essence. In bringing forms to life on the canvas, Ardon adds a dimension to our perception of the universe, endowing it with fresh meaning.

During the 1950s he began to exhibit in Europe and gained a reputation as a distinguished colorist with a strong and near-Surrealist imagination. In 1954 he participated in the Venice Biennale where he won a UNESCO prize. He held one-man shows at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1960 and the Marlborough Fine Arts Museum, London, in 1962. Like his contemporaries, Ben Shahn and Moshe Castel, Mordecai Ardon often enriched his works with the Hebrew alphabet. His works, mainly executed in oils, are to be found in the best-known museums of Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Brussels, New York, Pittsburgh and Munich. He received the Israel Prize 1963. He died in 1992.