Lidia Zavadsky

Lidia Zavadsky was born in 1937 in Drohobych

Lidia Zavadsky was born Felicia Schindler in 1937 in Drohobycz, Poland, today in Ukraine. Her father was exiled to Siberia, later joined the Red Army, and his traces were lost. During the Nazi occupation she lived with her mother in the Drohobycz ghetto, and after it was destroyed they hid in a cellar for two years.

After the war the family was moved to Wrocław, where her mother remarried. Her family moved to Israel in 1958, but she stayed to study law at the University of Wrocław. She joined them in Israel in 1961 and worked as a cleaner.

At the Polish embassy she met Pyotr Zavadsky, who also wanted to return to Poland, and he became her husband. Bezalel had no sculpture department, so she studied in its pottery department. She paid for her studies by cleaning the department and restoring pottery at archaeological digs.

She joined the department's teaching staff in 1965 and became its head in 1987. She moved the department from pottery toward ceramic sculpture. With the Sandberg Grant she studied lead glazes of the Tang Dynasty and made a series of large, brightly colored jars.

Her last large work was a life-size bright green donkey, which she gave to the Haaretz Museum. She developed cancer linked to the toxic lead she used. She died in November 2001.