Bertha Urdang

Bertha Urdang was born in 1912 in London

Bertha Urdang was born in London in 1912 to a family of modest means. She attended North London Collegiate School. She then studied journalism and art history at the University of London, and French and aesthetics at the Sorbonne in Paris.

She moved to the Land of Israel in 1934 and first worked in Haifa as secretary to Colonel Frederick Kisch of the Jewish Agency. In 1936 she married the agronomist Tuvia Urdang, and they had 3 daughters. He was killed by a land mine in Jerusalem in 1948.

During World War II she served as an officer in the British Army's radio propaganda department. In 1949 she ran the Jewish Agency's information department in London, and in 1950 she returned to Israel.

In 1955 she opened Rina Gallery in Jerusalem with her partner Shmuel Engel. The gallery showed artists such as Yosef Zaritsky, Avigdor Stematsky and Raffi Lavie. After the partnership ended in 1966, she opened a new Rina Gallery, and in 1972 she opened a branch in New York.

She closed the New York gallery in 1993 and moved to Beit HaKerem in Jerusalem. She died in Jerusalem in 2001. Her archive is kept at the Information Center for Israeli Art at the Israel Museum.