Avi Schwartz

Avi Schwartz was born in 1938 in Bucharest

Avi Schwartz was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1938, to a family in the diamond trade. His father owned an art collection, and during the bombing of Bucharest in World War II he copied the paintings on the walls at home. The family left Romania in 1947 and reached Israel through Paris in 1948, where his grandfather Moses Josephson, first president of the Israel Diamond Exchange, met them.

He attended Shalva High School in Tel Aviv and enrolled at the Avni Institute as its youngest student. His teachers there included Yehezkel Streichman, Avigdor Stematsky and Marcel Janko, who favored abstract art. Schwartz wanted to paint figuratively, and the gap with his teachers led him to stop painting for a time.

When the Sinai Campaign began, he left his studies and joined the IDF. He later married Nurit, completed his matriculation exams and briefly studied history at Tel Aviv University. He worked as a diamond polisher and later ran the diamond, gemstone and metalwork department at the ORT school in Ramat Gan.

He returned to painting at 30 after meeting the painter Zvi Shorr, and was called his direct disciple. He was also influenced by Shimshon Holzman and Arieh Lubin, and painted with them in cafes and at the Jaffa seafront. In 1979 Holzman invited him to join workshops at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.