Mordechai Avniel

Mordechai Avniel was born in 1900 in Paryčy

Mordechai Avniel was born Mordechai Dickstein in 1900 in Parychy, in present-day Belarus. He studied art in Yekaterinburg, Russia, from 1913 to 1919. He was active in the Zionist movement and was arrested by the Communist authorities in 1920.

He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1921 and first worked in citrus groves near Petah Tikva. In 1923, encouraged by Boris Schatz, he moved to Jerusalem to study at Bezalel, where he later taught painting and sculpture. From 1924 to 1928 he headed the small sculpture section there.

He also studied law and received a license to practice in 1932. He chaired the Revisionist Zionist center in Jerusalem from 1929 to 1934. From 1935 he lived in Haifa, where he led the local Herut branch, sat on the city council, and in 1950 cofounded the law firm Avniel, Salomon & Company.

In the 1960s he left the firm to focus on art. He won the Herman Struck Prize in 1952 and represented Israel at the 1958 Venice Biennale. His work is held by museums in Israel and the United States. He died in Haifa in 1989.