The Promised Land: Jewish Motifs in Czech-Israeli Visual Arts

The artists who were born in Bohemia and Moravia, but in the course of life immigrated to Israel, remain an important chapter in both Czech and Israeli art histories. Several of them (e.g. Otte Wallish, Dan Kulka, Robert Piesen) were educated in their mother country and already participated actively in local cultural life. The others were merely born in Czechia and only as children left for Israel, where they later received their professional training and became renowned Israeli painters, draughtspersons, graphic artists, photographers, designers and sculptors.
Considering Israeli artists of Czech origin, we can distinguish five artistic generations. Members of the oldest generation (e.g. Anna Ticho, Ludwig Blum) immigrated to Mandatory Palestine during the first two decades of the 20th century. The youngest generation (e.g. Jan Tichý) gained recently honour in the field of contemporary Israeli art despite their arrival only in the nineties of the last century. There were a total of about sixty important Israeli artists of Czech origin in the 20th century. Most of them were using Jewish motifs and images of Eretz Yisrael in their artworks.