Aharon Kahana

Aharon Kahana was born in 1905 in Stuttgart

Aharon Kahana was born in Stuttgart, Germany, under the name Hermann Cohen. In 1922 he began studying at the art academy in his home city.

After his studies he moved to Berlin, where Alfred Flechtheim supported him and helped him win a grant to study in Paris. He lived in Paris from 1927 to 1929 and encountered Fauvist painting there. Back in Berlin he earned a living designing shop windows and focused on portraits.

In 1934 he immigrated to the Land of Israel and settled in Ramat Gan, where he kept designing shop windows. He moved from semi-abstract work to realist painting and painted landscapes until 1940. He won the Dizengoff Prize in 1938 and again in 1953, and held a solo show at the Katz gallery in Tel Aviv in 1946.

In 1947 he and his wife Mida went to Paris to learn ceramics, and they later made ceramics together. His work drew on the Canaanite movement, and as a founder of New Horizons he turned to abstract geometric forms hinting at mythological symbols.

He died in Paris on July 3, 1967, and was buried in Kiryat Shaul cemetery. His Ramat Gan house, designed by Yaakov Rechter, opened to the public as a museum in 1991.