Images From The Bible

Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1980. presumed First Edition/First Printing thus. Hardcover. Very good/good. Shalom of Safed, Shalom of Zefat. 112 pages. Illustrations (some in color). Introduction by Daniel Doron. List of Paintings. Paintings and Relevant Accompanying Biblical Texts. DJ has some wear, soiling, and edge tears. Shalom of Safed was a humble watchmaker who lived in Safed, in the Galilee. At the age of fifty-eight, he began to paint and was almost immediately acclaimed as a great and unique folk-artist. Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE (September 30, 1928 - July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He publicly condemned the 1915 Armenian genocide and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, at which time the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind," stating that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel had delivered a message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity. Shalom Moskovitz was a watchmaker by trade but also worked as a scribe, a silversmith and even a stonemason. He did whatever it took to put food on his humble table and feed his family. Then it happened that his workshop was destroyed in the riots during the War for Independence in 1948. All the tools of his trade were lost. What might he do? He turned from the life of a practical craftsman to the life of an artist, first making folk-art toys and then simple paintings. He became, when he was just entering his seventies, perhaps one of the most original Israeli artists of the twentieth century. He was Shalom of Safed. Shalom of Safed (1887-1980) was a primitive artist who created in the last thirty years of his life a large opus of paintings devoted to the Torah and Jewish life. Collector and patron Daniel Doron believed that "Shalom's art represents...a unique blend between a literary tradition - the Hasidic heritage and the mystical lore of the Cabala - and the artist's sensitivity to the light and landscape of the Galilee." As a pious Jew in the sleepy insular environment of Safed he had no knowledge of art history or contemporary art, nevertheless his work has a surprisingly modernist flavor. It tends to be flat with broad areas of strong, evocative color. Figurative elements are subsumed within a powerful graphic composition. Textual passages are incorporated into the image echoing some Pop Art masterpieces and prefiguring many Post-modern techniques. These modernist elements are typical manifestations of many aspects of 'naive' folk art. The difference here is that Shalom utilizes these techniques in an extremely focused depiction of the Biblical narrative where the modernism of his form actively reflects and enhances the Torah meaning.Daniel Doron (born 1929) is an Israeli publicist and political activist. He is the founder and director of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress (ICSEP). In this capacity, he has recommended economic changes to the Israeli government, some of which have successfully been implemented. He has written extensively on the advantages of free market economics in publications including the Wall Street Journal and the Jerusalem Post. For the latter, he serves as a regular columnist on economic matters. He has also translated into Hebrew texts about free market, as well as English prose - The Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and wrote work of literary criticism. Daniel Doron was sole representative of the internationally renowned artist Shalom of Safed, arranging his 15 museum exhibitions. Doron's film on Shalom won several important awards and was represented in the US at international festivals.