Remembering Mordecai Ardon, the Israeli artist who combined Modern and old techniques and presented Jewish mysticism through his work

Considered to be one of Israel’s greatest painters, influencing a number of young artists with his style, Mordecai Ardon was born on this day, July 13, 1896. The artist was named Max Bronstein at birth in a region that now falls within Poland. In 1933, he immigrated to Jerusalem and in 1936, he got the British Mandatory Palestinian citizenship and changed his name to Mordecai Ardon.

During 1920-25, Ardon studied at the Bauhaus School, Weimar, Germany. He was in august company, with classmates and close friends such as Itten, Klee, Kandinsky, and Feininger inspiring his work. He was particularly taken by Klee’s style, whose influence on his artistic development lasted a lifetime. After Bauhas, he studied the techniques of Old Masters under Max Doerner at the Munich Academy in 1926. These seemingly contradictory elements informed his approach to painting by bringing about a dynamic blend of the Expressionist, Modern, and Abstract techniques with that of the techniques of the Old Masters.

Beginning in the 1950s, Ardon started extensively using symbolism from Jewish mystic traditions and the Bible, as well as his own experiences. For example, ‘Bird Near a Yellow Wall’ (1950) is a reminder of the Holocaust. The mystical styles are predominant in paintings such as ‘Gates of Light’, in which he is reportedly said to have expressed “the inner mystery and timelessness of the landscape.\” Another painting replete with mysticism and a reverence to the scriptural events is ‘At the Gates of Jerusalem’ (1967). A significant break in his painting materialized with participation in the Venice Biennale in 1968.

While Ardon fundamentally did not believe in the function of art in disseminating meaning and discourse in social or political matters, he eventually represented his inner turmoil about the horrors of war by making a well-received series of eight triptychs between 1955 and 1988. The themes of war and injustice can also be found in paintings such as ‘Khirbet Khize’ and ‘Fatal Eclipse’.

Ardon received immense respect during his tenure as a teacher and director of the \”New Bezalel\” institution. He is said to have performed his duties with an ardent sense of social involvement all the while developing and fine-tuning his own arts practice on the side. Seen as the father of the regional approach in Israeli art, he was to influence artists such as Avigdor Arikha, Yehuda Bacon, Naftali Bezem, Shraga Weil and Shmuel Boneh, his pupils, who were to become seasoned and acclaimed practitioners in their own right in the country.

Ardon died in Jerusalem in 1992. In 2006 his painting ‘The Woodpecker of Time’ (1963) was sold at Christie\’s for $643,200. In 2014 his painting ‘The Awakening’ (1969) was sold at Sotheby\’s for $821,000.