Avigdor Stematsky

Avigdor Stematsky was born in 1908 in Odesa

Stematsky was born in 1908 in Odesa, in the Russian Empire. His father, Zvi, was a timber trader in his youth and later an accountant. In 1913 the family moved to Feodosia in Crimea, and in 1921 it immigrated to the Land of Israel and settled in Tel Aviv, where his father opened a bookshop.

He studied at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium and from 1926 at Bezalel in Jerusalem, which he left because of its conservative approach. He took architecture classes at the Technion and in 1929 joined the studio of Yitzhak Frenkel in Tel Aviv. In 1930 and 1931 he studied in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi.

He took part in the Massad group and later helped found the New Horizons group. After Paris he lived with his parents in Ramat Gan, worked in the family orchard and took odd jobs, and taught painting. He later taught at the Avni Institute and at Haifa University, and he worked closely with the painter Yehezkel Streichman.

He received the Dizengoff Prize twice, the Sandberg Prize and other awards. He died in 1989.