Yitzhak Frenkel

Yitzhak Frenkel was born in 1899 in Odesa

Frenkel was born in Odesa in 1899 to a Jewish family. He was a descendant of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev. As a youth he studied in a yeshiva, where he met the painter Chaim Glicksberg.

He studied painting in Odesa and later studied under the artist Aleksandra Ekster. In 1919 he moved to the Land of Israel on the ship Ruslan with his older brother Moshe.

In 1920 he opened a studio at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium and helped found the Ha-Tomer artists' cooperative. Economic hardship led him to leave the country that year. In Paris he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne.

He returned in 1925 and opened an art studio in Tel Aviv under the Histadrut, which ran until 1929. His students learned the principles of modern French painting. In 1926 he and his students showed works at the Ohel theater, considered the first abstract paintings shown in the country.

He also lived in Portugal and South Africa, and Safed became a central subject of his art. He died in Tel Aviv in 1981 and was buried in Safed.