The Binding of Isaac

Aharon Kahana

1952

Abstract painting featuring geometric shapes and forms with dark outline.
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The Binding of Isaac was painted at a time when Aharon Kahana was developing a new style that favored abstract forms divided by thick lines. His paintings were both an embrace of modern European art and a turn away from it, an attempt to forge a new Israeli art. Kahana and others in the New Horizons art movement drew inspiration from ancient myths and pagan imagery and what they saw as indigenous, Canaanite culture. Known for his paintings with biblical themes, Kahana returned to the subject of Abraham and Isaac a couple of years later in 1954 with a large ceramic wall mural, Sacrifice of Isaac, on the campus of Hebrew University in Jerusalem in Givat Ram.

Credits

From the collection of Shoshana and Avraham Rabani.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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Visual and Material Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century

1939–1973

Jewish visual art flourished and diversified in the postwar period, reflecting the social and political transformations taking place in the world.

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