Zahara Schatz - Biography

Zahara Schatz (a.k.a. Zahara Shatz and Zaraha Sandow) (born: 1916, died 1999), was an Israeli fine and decorative artist and daughter of Boris Schatz, who founded the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, as it is known today, in Jerusalem.

Biography

Schatz was born in Jerusalem in Ottoman Palestine in 1916. After studying at the École Nationale Supérieure des arts Décoratifs / National School of Decorative Arts in Paris, Schatz rose to prominence in Israel and overseas. She exhibited and won prestigious prizes in the U.S. and Europe, including at the Milan Triennale, where she won a special award, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she was recognized for a 1951 lamp design. The lamp by Heifetz Manufacturing Company, U.S., features a metal conical shade that projects light upward onto a metal disk for deflected illumination. It is one of a number of examples of her work that followed her father's dualism: the pursuit of both fine art and crafts (or design). The base of another more craft-oriented lamp is a sculptural form of a winding snake-like brass tube and bent PMMA with imbedded metal minutiae.

She also participated in the Venice Biennale of 1959 and designed the gate, built at the Bezalel Academy, of the President's House, Jerusalem.

Schatz lived in a number of places—Israel, New York, and Northern California where she was part of the Big Sur artists'/writers' colony that included San Francisco sculptor Benny Bufano, author Henry Miller, and her brother Bezalel Schatz. She also lived in Berkeley, California, where she was close with Courtroom Sketch Artist Rosalie Ritz, her husband Erwin Ritz and their daughter, Publisher and Managing Editor of The Environmentalist, Janet Ritz.

Zahara and Bezalel rejected their father's predilection for Romantic Classicism and his dogged development of a Jewish Eretz Israel style in favor of a European-American modernism.

She died in Jerusalem in 1999.

Awards & positions

• 1951: award for a table lamp, Low-Cost Lighting Competition/Exhibition, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 1955: Israel Prize, for painting and sculpture
• 1954: medal of honor, Triennale di Milano
• 1959: Dizengoff Prize for Sculpture
• 1959: participation in the Venice Biennale
• 1960: Yad Vashem Prize, for a six-branch candelabrum
• 1991: Shoshanna Ish-Shalom Prize, Jerusalem
• Adviser on industrial design at Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Exhibition

• "Zahara Schatz: A Retrospective. The Third Exhibition in the Schatz House Series, celebrating 100 Years of Israeli Art," The Artists' House, Jerusalem, 2006.

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients
• Schatz

• Eva Elisa Wardi (2005). "The poet of light, Zahara Schatz," documentary film, Jerusalem: Israel Museum, The Gabriel Scherover Information Center of Israeli Art, DVD collections, 52 min.:48 sec.
• Exhibition catalog, Gideon Ofrat (2006). Zahara Schatz 1916–999, Jerusalem: The Artists' House.
• Dana Gilerman (5 January 2006). "Prof. Schatz's wayward children," Haaretz newspaper.
• Meir Ronnen (20 July 2006). "The last Schatz," The Jerusalem Post.

Notes

External links

• The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
• Israeli Art Guide
• The House on Bezalel Street (DVD)