ARDON, MORDECAI
Jerusalem Landscape.

Jerusalem Landscape.
Oil on canvas. Signed by the artist lower right. Framed. 21 x 28.5 inches; 53 x 72.5 cm.

Jerusalem, 1977.

Born Mordechai Eliezer Bronstein in 1896 to Orthodox parents in Tuchow, Poland, Ardon displayed an early interest in the arts. In 1919 he traveled to Berlin where he pursued a career in acting, but soon changed direction and from 1921 studied at the avant-garde Bauhaus, under Klee and Kandinsky until its closing in 1924. In 1926 he studied the Old Masters at the Munich Academy and in 1928 joined the Berlin 'November Group' where he was introduced to artistic abstraction and with whom he exhibited his art. Ardon emigrated to Palestine in 1933 and joined the faculty of the New Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts which included at that time Jakob Steinhardt, Anna Ticho, and Leopold Krakauer - eventually becoming the school's director. Ardon's early work focused on landscapes and expressive depictions of figures. Later, his art is characterized by an abstract style combined with a classic painting technique, demonstrated by rich vibrant colors and a complex system of imagery, i. e. shapes and forms based upon the Kabbalistic mystical tradition, often assimilated within a historical-Zionist framework.
     

Provenance: Commissioned directly from the artist, 1977.
     

Exhibited: The Jewish Museum, New York, The Batkin Collection of Israeli Art (1985). Catalogue p. 12.