Moshe Barasch

Moshe Barasch was born in 1920 in Chernivtsi

Moshe Barasch was born in 1920 in Chernivtsi, then in Romania, to a Zionist and educated family. He showed a talent for art as a youth and exhibited drawings and paintings in Prague, Budapest and Boston. From 1941 to 1944 he lived under Nazi rule in his hometown and was held in the Chernivtsi ghetto, where he married Berta Gendelman in 1942.

After his release he served for a time in the Red Army and then joined the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, helping bring Holocaust survivors to the Land of Israel. In early 1948 he joined the Palmach and fought in Jerusalem. After the war he attended a teachers' seminary in 1949 and was a member of Kibbutz Ein Harod until 1954.

Barasch taught himself art history and visited the Warburg Institute in London. In 1958 he was invited to establish the art history department at the Hebrew University, and his 1961 book on death in Michelangelo's thought was accepted as equal to a doctorate. He became senior lecturer in 1961, head of the department in 1964 and full professor in 1971.

From 1967 to 1969 he was a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at Harvard, and later taught as a visitor at New York University and Cornell. His research focused on Renaissance art and was written mostly in English, while in Hebrew he wrote introductory books and founded the Mevoot series at Bialik Institute. He received the Israel Prize in 1996 and died in Jerusalem in 2004.