Art and designמשה ברנשטיין

Moshe Bernstein

Moshe Bernstein was an Israeli painter, illustrator and poet whose work focused largely on the Jewish shtetl of Eastern Europe destroyed in the Holocaust.

1920 to 2006Paintings of the Eastern European shtetlYiddish poetry and drawingsTel Aviv bohemian circles

Born: 15 August 1920, Biaroza
Died: 8 December 2006, Tel Aviv
Occupation: painter, poet, illustrator

Moshe Bernstein was born in 1920 in Biaroza

Moshe Bernstein was born on August 15, 1920, in Biaroza Kartuska, Poland, now in Belarus. At 15 he began studying at the art academy in Vilnius and stayed there until 1939. He spent World War II in the Soviet Union, and his family in Poland was killed in the Holocaust.

In 1947 he came to the Land of Israel as an illegal immigrant and was held in a detention camp in Cyprus. There he met the painter Naftali Bezem, and a linocut by Bernstein appeared in a print album linked to Bezem's work with the refugees.

In Israel he kept painting the shtetl and was part of Tel Aviv's bohemian circles, with his paintings hung at Cafe Kassit. He exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum, held a solo show at the Haifa Museum in 1967 and a retrospective at Ein Harod in 1973. He also illustrated Yiddish poetry books and published his own Yiddish poems and drawings.

In 1964 he married Ilana-Lena Ovshani of Kibbutz Ein Harod Meuhad, and they had 2 daughters. He was named an honored citizen of Tel Aviv-Yafo in 1992. He died in Tel Aviv in 2006 and was buried at Ein Harod Meuhad.