Reuven Rubin

Reuven Rubin was born in 1893 in Galați

Reuven Zelicovici, later Reuven Rubin, was born in 1893 in Galați, Romania, to a poor Hasidic Jewish family. His father was a synagogue cantor and beadle. He began drawing as a small child, though his family did not encourage his art.

In 1912 he went to Palestine to study at the Bezalel art school in Jerusalem, where he was placed in the ivory carving workshop. He left in 1913 for Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. When World War I began, he went back to Romania.

He traveled to the United States with the painter Arthur Kolnik and showed his work at the Anderson Gallery in New York. In 1923 he settled in Mandate Palestine, and in 1924 he held the first solo exhibition at the Tower of David. He became one of the founders of the Eretz-Yisrael style, painting biblical landscapes, Jerusalem, the Galilee and their people.

From the 1930s he designed stage sets for Habima, Ohel and other theaters. From 1948 to 1950 he served as Israel's first envoy to Romania. He published his autobiography, My Life - My Art, in 1969.

He died in Tel Aviv in 1974 and left his home on Bialik Street and a collection of his paintings to the city. The Rubin Museum opened there in 1983.