Moshe Castel
Encyclopedia
Biography
Moshe Elazar Castel born in Jerusalem, Ottoman Palestine, in 1909, to Rabbi Yehuda Castel and his wife Rachel. The family was descended from Spanish Jews from Castile who immigrated to the Holy LandHoly Land
The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...
after the explusion of the Jews from Spain
Alhambra decree
The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year.The edict was formally revoked on 16 December 1968, following the Second...
in 1492. His father was born in Hebron
Hebron
Hebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
. He opened religious schools for Sephardi boys in the Nahalat Shiv'a and Bukharim
Bukharim
Bukharim is a neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem, Israel. Many of the residents of Shkhunat HaBukharim , as it is known, are Haredi Jews...
quarters of Jerusalem. Moshe grew up in the Bukharim neighborhood, where he attended his father's school. At the age of 13, he was accepted to the Bezalel Art School
Bezalel Academy of Art and Design
Bezalel Academy of Art and Design is Israel's national school of art, founded in 1906 by Boris Schatz. It is named for the Biblical figure Bezalel, son of Uri , who was appointed by Moses to oversee the design and construction of the Tabernacle ....
, directed by Boris Schatz
Boris Schatz
Boris Schatz was a Lithuanian Jewish artist and sculptor who founded the Bezalel School in Jerusalem.-Biography:Boris Schatz was born in Varniai, Kaunas district, Lithuania, under the rule of the Russian Empire in 1867. His father, a teacher in a cheder , sent him to study in a yeshiva in...
, where he studied from 1921-1925. His teacher, Shmuel Ben-David, encouraged him to study art in Paris.
Moshe traveled to Paris in 1927, where he attended Academie Julien and Ecole du Louvre
École du Louvre
The École du Louvre is an institution of higher education and French Grande École located in the Aile de Flore of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France, and is dedicated to the study of archaeology, art history, anthropology and epigraphy....
. He sat in the Louvre copying the works of Rembrandt, Velasquez, Delacroix, and Courbet, intrigued by their paint-layering techniques. It was here that he began to realize that "art is not symbolic, but rather material, the material is the main thing, the way the paint is placed, the way the layers are placed on the picture, this is the most essential thing."
In May 1927, the World Union of Hebrew Youth in Paris sponsored his first exhibit. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who was in Paris at the time, wrote an introduction for the catalogue.
In 1940, Castel returned to Palestine and settled in Safed
Safed
Safed , is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel. Due to its high elevation, Safed experiences warm summers and cold, often snowy, winters...
. In
1949, Castel married Bilhah (née Bauman), an actress.
Artistic career
In 1947, Castel helped to found the "New Horizons" (Ofakim Hadashim) group together with Yosef Zaritsky, Yehezkel StreichmanYehezkel Streichman
Yehezkel Streichman was an Israeli painter. He is considered a pioneer of Israeli modernist painting. Among the awards that he won were the Dizengoff Prize and the Israel Prize.-Early life:Streichman was born in Kovno, Lithuania...
, Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
and others. In 1959, he purchased a studio in Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
where he worked for several months a year. In 1955, a solo exhibition of his works was mounted at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Tel Aviv Museum of Art
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was established in 1932 in a building that was the home of Tel Aviv's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. The Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art opened in 1959. The museum moved to its current location on King Saul Avenue in...
. His murals hang in the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
, Binyanei HaUma
International Convention Center (Jerusalem)
The International Convention Centre , commonly known as Binyenei HaUma , is a concert hall and conventional center in Giv'at Ram in Jerusalem, Israel. It is the largest convention center in the Middle East...
Convention Center, Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...
in New York, and the official residence of the President of Israel
President of Israel
The President of the State of Israel is the head of state of Israel. The position is largely an apolitical ceremonial figurehead role, with the real executive power lying in the hands of the Prime Minister. The current president is Shimon Peres who took office on 15 July 2007...
in Jerusalem.
Style
In the 1930s and 1940s, many of Castel's paintings depicted the lives of Sephardic Jews in the Holy Land, revealing the influence of Persian miniatures. From the 1950s on, Castel created relief paintings inspired by the "ancient predecessors of Hebrew civilization." In 1948, he visited the ruins of an ancient synagogue in KorazinChorazin
Chorazin was a village in northern Galilee, two and a half miles from Capernaum on a hill above the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.-Biblical references:...
, an ancient Jewish town in the Galilee
Galilee
Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...
. Inspired by the basalt blocks he saw there, engraved with images and ornaments, he began to use ground basalt, which he molded into shapes, as his basic material. The technique utilized ground basalt rock mixed with sand and glue, infused with the rich colors that became his trademark. The works were embellished with archaic forms derived from ancient script, symbolism and mythological signs from Hebrew and Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
ian culture. As a member of the New Horizons group, he combined elements of abstract European art with Eastern motifs and "Canaanite art
Canaanism
Canaanism was a cultural and ideological movement founded in 1939 that reached its peak in the 1940s among the Jews of Palestine. It has significantly impacted the course of Israeli art, literature, and spiritual and political thought. Its adherents were called Canaanites...
."
Awards and commemoration
- In 1941 and again in 1946, Castel was awarded the Dizengoff PrizeDizengoff PrizeThe Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture is awarded annually by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality since 1937.The following is a table of Dizengoff Prize laureates in their respective art form:...
for painting by the Tel AvivTel AvivTel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
Municipality. - He won the "Premier do Estado" prize at the São Paulo Art BiennialSão Paulo Art BiennialThe São Paulo Art Biennial was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennial , which serves as its role model....
in Brazil. - The Moshe Castel Museum of Art, in a building designed by Israeli architect David Resnik overlooking the desert landscape, opened in Ma'aleh Adumim in 2010.