Emmanuel Mané-Katz

Emmanuel Mané-Katz was born in 1894 in Kremenchuk

Mané-Katz was born in 1894 in Kremenchuk, in the Russian Empire, to religious parents. He was the seventh child of Leizer Katz, a synagogue beadle, and Malka Rabinovich. His father wanted him to become a rabbi.

He studied in a heder and a yeshiva, then at art schools in Vilna, Mirgorod and Kiev. In 1913 he came to Paris and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under Fernand Cormon.

During the First World War he lived in Petrograd, where he painted Jewish subjects and exhibited. He later taught art in Kremenchuk and at the art academy in Kharkov, where he joined avant-garde groups.

In 1921 he returned to Paris, where he befriended Pablo Picasso and became part of the School of Paris. He became a French citizen in 1927 and first visited Mandate Palestine in 1928. In 1931 his painting The Wailing Wall won a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair.

Early in the Second World War he was captured by the Germans but escaped, and he lived in New York from 1940 to 1945. In 1958 he settled in Haifa, where his home became the Mané-Katz Museum. He died in 1962 and left his estate to the city of Haifa.