Literatureגבריאל טלפיר

Gabriel Talphir

Gabriel Talphir was an Israeli poet, art critic, editor, publisher and translator who founded the arts journal Gazith in 1932.

1901 to 1990Founding the journal GazithHebrew poetry and long poemsArt criticism and art booksLiterary translation

Born: 16 July 1901, Ivano-Frankivsk
Died: 31 July 1990
Occupation: linguist, poet, translator, literary editor
Education: University of Vienna
Founded: 1935), Gazith (1932)

Gabriel Talphir was born in 1901 in Ivano-Frankivsk

Talphir was born Joseph Wundermann in 1901 in Stanislaw, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a young man he joined the Zionist youth movement Hechalutz.

He studied at the University of Vienna. He then taught at Jewish schools in Vilna, Zamość, Lwow and Warsaw.

His first poems appeared in Jewish periodicals in Poland in 1924, and he later wrote long poems such as Legion, Jazz Band and Hunger. He moved to the Land of Israel in 1925 and first worked as a laborer. In 1932 he founded Gazith, a journal on art and literature that he edited with his wife Miriam.

For years Gazith was the only Hebrew journal devoted to the plastic arts. In 1937 he published an album of contemporary Jewish painters. He translated books by Ilya Ehrenburg, Ève Curie and Franz Werfel, and edited and published art books.

His wife Miriam died in 1962, and in 1963 he married the painter Rivka Talphir. He died in 1990. In 1991 Gazith reissued all his long poems.