The Scholar, the Laborer, and the Toiler of the Soil

Maurice Ascalon

1939

Copper relief sculpture depicting three hooded men. The one on the left holds a scroll and has a long beard, the middle holds a hammer, and the right holds a hand plow and has a short beard.
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Maurice Ascalon, sometimes called the father of modern Israeli decorative arts, was commissioned to create this sculpture for the façade of the Palestine Pavilion of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The fourteen-foot-tall hammered repoussé copper-relief sculpture shows three figures, representing scholarship, industry, and agriculture, all necessary elements of a modern society. While the emphasis in the Palestine Pavilion was on the evolving nature of Jewish life in Palestine, the archaic dress of the figures was intended to assert the centuries-old connection of the Jewish people with the biblical land of Israel.

Credits

From Palestine Book, ed. Meyer W. Weisgal (New York: Pavilion Publications, Inc., for the American Committee for Jewish Palestine Participation at the New York’s World’s Fair, 1939). Photo courtesy Spertus Institute.

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

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Related Guide

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.

Creator Bio

Maurice Ascalon

1913–2003

The Hungarian-born artist Maurice Ascalon was among the foremost designers of art-deco-style Judaica and introduced the practice of applying chemically induced patina to bronze and brass objects. Ascalon was born Moshe Klein to a Hasidic family, which he left at the age of fifteen in order to pursue his artistic studies at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. He immigrated to Palestine in 1934, where he founded Pal-Bell, a company that produced ritual and secular objects in wood and metal. In 1956, Ascalon moved to the United States, living in New York and Los Angeles while continuing to create decorative and functional metalwork for synagogues, educational institutions, and public spaces across the country.

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