Art and designאיזידור אשהיים

Isidor Ascheim

Isidor Ascheim was a German-born Israeli painter and printmaker who worked in the German Expressionist tradition and taught at and directed the Bezalel school in Jerusalem.

1891 to 1968German Expressionist paintingTeaching and directing BezalelThe Jerusalem school of painting

Born: 14 October 1891, Margonin
Died: 19 May 1968, Jerusalem
Occupation: painter, printmaker, artist
Wars: World War I

Isidor Ascheim was born in 1891 in Margonin

Isidor Ascheim was born in 1891 in Margonin, a town now in Poland, and grew up in Breslau. He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family. He served during World War I.

From 1919 to 1923 he studied at the art academy in Breslau under Otto Mueller. He was influenced by Erich Heckel of the Die Brücke group. From 1925 he belonged to an artists' association in Silesia and showed his work in Breslau and Berlin.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was barred from painting and exhibiting, and he taught at a Jewish school. In 1940 he reached the Land of Israel as an illegal immigrant and was held by the British in the Atlit detention camp. He settled in Jerusalem, and in 1946 he married the German-born artist Margot Lange.

In 1945 he began teaching drawing at Bezalel, and he served as its director from 1960 to 1961. He kept teaching there until 1964. His work, part of the Jerusalem school, showed women and landscapes drawn from nature in a dark palette.

He received the Dizengoff Prize in 1953 and the Jerusalem Prize in 1955, and took part in the Venice Biennale. He died in 1968 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.