Art and designלודוויג יהודה וולפרט

Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert

Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert was a German-born Israeli-American goldsmith and designer known for creating Judaica in modern styles.

1900 to 1981Modern Judaica designHeading Bezalel's metal departmentThe Flying Camel sculptureTobe Pascher Workshop in New York

Born: 7 October 1900, Hildesheim
Died: 6 November 1981, New York City
Occupation: sculptor, university teacher, designer, visual artist

Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert was born in 1900 in Hildesheim

Wolpert was born in Germany in 1900 to a poor Orthodox family of Lithuanian Jewish origin. As a child he was teased because of his cleft lip.

He studied sculpture at the Frankfurt School of Art from 1916 to 1920. He returned there to study goldsmithing from 1925 to 1928.

His work drew on the Bauhaus movement, using clean geometric shapes without decoration. It became known after the 1930 exhibition "Kult und Form" at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, he moved with his family to Mandatory Palestine.

In 1935 he began teaching at Bezalel in Jerusalem, where he headed the metal department with David Heinz Gumbel. He stressed Hebrew lettering in ceremonial art and opened his own Jerusalem workshop in 1942. In 1949 he designed a Torah ark that Chaim Weizmann gave to Harry Truman.

In 1956 he moved to the United States and headed the Tobe Pascher Workshop at the Jewish Museum in New York. He received an honorary doctorate from the Spertus Institute in 1976. He died in Manhattan in 1981.