Born in Zerkow, Germany (today, Żerków, Poland), the painter and woodcut artist Jacob (Jakob) Steinhardt studied in Berlin before World War I and was much influenced by the Expressionist movement. As a soldier in the German army during the war, he served in the Lithuanian region and Poland, where his encounter with traditional East European Jewish society left a lasting impression on him and his work. In 1933, he and his wife fled Berlin and settled in Jerusalem. In 1948, Steinhardt was appointed chair of the Graphics Department at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, and from 1954 to 1957, served as the Bezalel School’s director. He is best known for his woodcuts of biblical and Jewish figures.
Though Jacob Steinhardt came to be best known for his woodcuts depicting biblical and Jewish subjects, this print, made during World War I, evokes the horrors he witnessed on the battlefield. Much of…
And you’re dead. And you’ve not yet been covered by the ground;
Far through a thousand streets like horses galloping round,
Young and old newsboys spread, rushing about their business,
Hawking papers…
An American eagle, stars and stripes, and the United States motto E pluribus unum adorn the top of this ketubah (marriage contract) from Gibraltar, between Shlomo ben Ya‘akov ben Otvoyl (spelling of…