Name Yitzhak Frenkel | Died 1981, Tel Aviv, Israel | |
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Education Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts | ||
Yitzhak Frenkel (Hebrew: יצחק פרנקל; born 1899, died 1981), also known as Alexandre Frenel, was an Israeli painter.
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Biography
Yitzhak Frenkel was born in 1899 in Odessa, Russian Empire. He was a great-grandson of the famous Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev. In 1917, he studied under Aleksandra Ekster at the Fine Arts Academy in Odessa. Frenkel immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1919 as part of the first wave of settlers of the Third Aliyah.
He died in Tel Aviv in 1981 and was buried in Safed.
Art career
In 1920, he established the artists' cooperative in Jaffa and an artists' studio in Herzliya. Later that year, he traveled to Paris where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière at the studios of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and painter Henri Matisse. He was one of the leading Jewish artists of École de Paris. Frenkel returned to Palestine in 1925 and opened the Histadrut Art School in Tel Aviv. His students included Shimshon Holzman, Mordechai Levanon, David Hendler, Joseph Kossonogi, and Siona Tagger. He was a mentor to Bezalel students Avigdor Stematsky, Yehezkel Streichman, Moshe Castel, and Arie Aroch.
Frenkel's style was closer to the abstract painting to which he was exposed in Paris than the orientalism that was popular in Palestine at that time. In 1934, he settled in Safed. There he painted the ancient synagogues, narrow lanes, local inhabitants and surrounding countryside. In 1973, his house reopened as a museum showcasing his work. In July 1978, Frenkel had a one-man show at the Orangerie in Paris.
Awards and commemoration
Frenkel won the Dizengoff Prize for painting twice, in 1938 and again in 1948. He took part in the first and second Venice Biennales.