Pastoral (Ein Karem Landscape)

The Israeli painter Israel Paldi (b. Feldman) was born in Radynsk, Ukraine. He moved to Palestine in 1909 and enrolled at the Bezalel Academy. From 1911 to 1914, he studied in Munich. At the outbreak of war, he tried to return to Palestine but was unable to and was forced to spend the war years in Turkey. On returning in 1918, he joined the modernist revolt against the more conventional style taught at Bezalel. His paintings of the 1920s featured folkloric motifs and exotic “oriental” figures. In later years he experimented with other techniques—abstraction, collage, and assemblage.