Abel Pann

Abel Pann was born in 1883 in Krāslava

Abel Pann was born Abba Pfeffermann in 1883 in Krāslava, then in the Russian Empire and today in Latvia. His parents were Nachum and Batia Pfeffermann. He grew up in an orthodox home and studied in a cheder.

At 12 he learned drawing from the painter Yehuda Pen of Vitebsk. In 1898 he began studying art in Odessa. In 1903 he drew the Kishinev pogrom and then moved to Paris, where he studied under William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

In 1912 Boris Schatz invited him to teach at Bezalel, and he reached Jerusalem in 1913. World War I kept him in Europe, where he made war posters and a series of drawings on the suffering of Jews in the east. He showed these drawings in the United States in 1917.

He returned to Jerusalem and taught at Bezalel. He devoted himself to scenes from the Hebrew Bible, in lithographs and later in pastels. He married Esther Nussbaum.

His son Eldad was killed defending Gush Etzion in the War of Independence, and Pann then painted scenes of the Holocaust. He died in Jerusalem in 1963 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot. An Israeli stamp honored him in 1972.