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Boris Schatz, Israeli painter and sculptor, born in Lithuania, 1867-1932

Shlomo Zalman Dov Baruch (later Boris) Schatz was born in December 1867 in the town of Varniai in the Kaunas district to a poor, religiously observant family. His maternal grandfather, a rabbi, told him stories from Jewish history that later inspired his art. At the age of 15, Schatz was sent to a yeshiva in Vilnius, but enrolled in the local art academy and soon broke with Orthodox Judaism. In Vilnius, he was exposed to Zionist ideology. In 1888, he moved to Warsaw, where he married Eugenia (Genia) Zhirmunsky. The couple moved to Paris and Schatz earned a living from odd jobs, including designing utensils for the Dreifuss ceramics workshop. During this period, he studied sculpture with Mark Antokolsky and Fernand Cormon.

In 1895, Schatz moved to Sofia, Bulgaria, accepting an invitation from Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria to become the official court sculptor and head the country’s Royal Academy of Art. In 1900, he won a gold medal for his “Bust of an Old Woman.”

In 1905, Schatz moved to Berlin, where he began to promote his idea of establishing a Jewish art school in Jerusalem. In January 1906, he immigrated to the Land of Israel and founded the Bezalel School, named for the biblical figure Bezalel ben Uri, who designed the Tabernacle and its ritual objects. The motto of the school was “Art is the bud, craft is the fruit.” Schatz organized exhibitions of the students’ work in Europe and the United States which were the first international exhibits of Jewish artists from the Land of Israel. He also established a museum for Jewish art affiliated with the school. In 1910, he set out his artistic philosophy: “I looked upon art as a temple and upon artists as its priests. I dreamed that I should become a high priest in the service of sacred art, that I would teach mankind the idea of the great and beautiful…”


While living on the shore of the Sea of Galilee during World War I, Schatz wrote a futurist novel entitled “The Rebuilt Jerusalem” in which Bezalel ben Uri, the Biblical artist, appears at the Bezalel school and takes him on a tour of the Land of Israel in 2018.

In 1911, Schatz married Olga Pevzner.They had two children, Zahara and Bezalel, who both became artists. The Bezalel school closed in 1929 due to financial difficulties. Schatz died in 1932 while fundraising on behalf of the school in the United States. He was buried in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. Bezalel reopened in 1935 as the New Bezalel School for Arts and Design.

Boris Shatz's early work, from his days in Warsaw, includes figurative reliefs and a small number of paintings and prints. While in Paris, his art took on a Jewish and Zionist character. He produced several works on the theme of Moses and created his acclaimed sculpture Mattathias the Maccabee (1894). Most of his work from this period has not survived. Schatz reached his artistic peak in Bulgaria in 1895-1905. In addition to developing Bulgarian nationalist themes, he created a series of reliefs on Jewish subjects inspired by classic and Baroque art. He also did a series of reliefs of Zionist leaders, among them Fanny and David Wolffsohn (1905) and Max Nordau (1924).

The Boris Schatz Archive is housed in the Information Center for Israeli Art at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. The collection includes over 300 unique artifacts, among them handwritten letters, postcards, photographs and awards presented to Schatz by the Palais de Sophia and the King of Bulgaria.

Education

1882-1887 Art School, Vilna.
1888-1889 Warsaw, Poland
1889-1895 Paris; with the painter Mark Antokolski
Corman Academy, Paris.

Teaching

1896 Director and sculpture teacher, private art school, Sofia, Bulgaria
1896 Sculpture teacher, private art school of Ira ​​Jan, Sofia, Bulgaria
1896-1905 Founded and directed Art Academy, Sofia
1906-1929 founded and directed Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem; established National Museum of Jewish Art

Awards And Prizes

1900 Gold medal, Paris, France
1904 Silver Medal, World Fair, St. Louis, USA