Father and Sons

Viennese-born painter, illustrator, and set designer Yosl Bergner grew up in Warsaw, the son of Yiddish writer Melekh Ravitch. He emigrated to Australia in 1937, where he studied painting at the Art School of the National Gallery of Victoria and became influential in the Australian art scene. In the early 1950s, after serving in the Australian Army, Bergner and his wife settled in Israel. He won the Dizengoff Prize for painting and sculpture in 1956 and, in 1980, the Israel Prize for painting. In 1985, Bergner paid a return visit to Australia, where a major retrospective exhibition of his paintings was held at the National Gallery of Victoria.