March 2025

CIE has compiled the following list of books, online exhibits and articles, including some available on our website, to guide understanding of the visual arts in Israel and during the New Yishuv.

Books and Online Collections

Baskind, Samantha, and Larry Silver. Jewish Art: A Modern History. London: Reaktion Books, 2011.

Berger, Natali. The Jewish Museum: History and Memory, Identity and Art From Vienna to the Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art. Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Center for Jewish Art. Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Czekanowska-Gutman, Monika. Reclaiming Biblical Heroines: Portrayals of Judith, Esther and the Shulamite in Early Twentieth Century Jewish Art. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2023.

Dekel, Tal. Transnational Identities: Women, Art, and Migration in Contemporary Israel. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016.

Edwards, Michelle Jaye. The Development of Israeli Painting and Printmaking. Doctoral dissertation, University of Iowa, 1981.

Efrat, Gideon. One Hundred Years of Art in Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.

Fuhrer, Ronald. Israeli Painting: From Post-Impressionism to Post-Zionism. Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1998.

Graves, David. New Realism in Contemporary Israeli Painting. Chicago: Austin Macauley Publishers, 2023.

Information Center for Israeli Art, Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Kamien-Kazhdan, Adina. Modernism in Dialogue: 20th-Century Painting and Sculpture in the Israel Museum. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2010.

Kofler, Hana, Ruthi Ofek and Richard Flantz. Milestones: Israeli Sculpture, 1948-1998. Tefen, Israel: The Open Museum.

Kochavi, Shir. Museums in Israel After the Holocaust: A Multifaceted History of Cultural Heritage. London: Routledge, 2024.

Lowin, Joseph. Art and the Artist in the Contemporary Israeli Novel. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017.

Manor, Dalia. Art in Zion: The Genesis of Modern National Art in Jewish Palestine. London: Routledge, 2005.

Mishory, Alec. Secularizing the Sacred: Aspects of Israeli Visual Culture. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

Roei, Noa. Civic Aesthetics: Militarism, Israeli Art and Visual Culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

Rubin, Reuven. Rubin: My Life, My Art. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1971.

Soltes, Ori. Modern Jewish Art : Definitions, Problems, and Opportunities. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

Steinberg, Linda Susan. Tabernacle in the Wilderness: A Study of Israeli Painting. Doctoral dissertation, San Francisco State University, 1974.

Swarts, Lynne M. Gender, Orientalism and the Jewish Nation at the German Fin de Siècle: Women in the Art of Ephraim Moses Lilien. New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.

Weininger, Melissa. Beyond the Land: Diaspora Israeli Culture in the Twenty-First Century. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2023.

Zalmona, Yigal. A Century of Israeli Art. Farnham, England: Lund Humphries, 2013.

Zalmona, Yigal. Boris Schatz: The Father of Israeli Art. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2006.

Articles

Ben-Asher Gitler, Inbal, “Visualizing Democracy, Difference, and Judaism in Israeli Posters, 1948-1978,” Israel Studies 22, No. 3 (2017): 48-76.

Birnbaum, Paula J., “Israeli Artist of the École de Paris, 1948-1968,” in Sculpting a Life: Chana Orloff Between Paris and Tel Aviv, Brandeis University Press (2022): 279-312.

Dekel, Tal, “From First-Wave to Third-Wave Feminist Art in Israel: A Quantum Leap,” Israel Studies 16, No. 1 (2011): 149-178.

Fine, Steven, “Modernity, Zionism, and the Menorah,” in The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel, Harvard University Press (2016): 99-133.

Fraiman, Susan Nashman, “75 Zionist/Israeli Works of Art,” Center for Israel Education, 2022.

Gossman, Lionel, “Jugendstil in Firestone: The Jewish Illustrator E.M. Lilien (1874-1925),” The Princeton University Library Chronicle 66, No. 1 (2004): 11-76.

Guilat, Yael, “The Yemeni Ideal in Israeli Culture and Arts,” Israel Studies 6, No. 3 (2001): 26-53.

Guilat, Yael, “‘Living Room’ and ‘Family Gaze’ in Contemporary Israeli Art: Comparative Perspectives on Cultural-Identity Representations,” Israel Studies 24, No. 1 (2019): 24-53.

Manor, Dalia, “Orientalism and Jewish National Art: The Case of Bezalel,” in Orientalism and the Jews, Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar (eds.), Brandeis University Press (2005): 142-161.

Manor, Tamar, “Altar and Sacrifice in Israeli Art of the ’40s and ’50s,” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies (1985): 17-22.

Radjai, J.J., “The Judeo-Persian Carpets of Kashan: Zionist Art and Cultural Craft Manufactured in Iran,” Studia Rosenthaliana 45 (2014): 135-152.

Roth-Cohen, Osnat, and Yehiel Limor, “The German (Fifth) Aliyah and the Development of Israel’s Advertising Industry,” Israel Studies Review 32, No. 2 (2017): 126-145.

Saposnik, Arieh Bruce, “Wailing Walls and Iron Walls: The Western Wall as Sacred Symbol in Zionist National Iconography,” The American Historical Review 120, No. 5 (2015): 1653-1681.

Zalmona, Igal, “Eight Decades of Israeli Art,” Shofar 4, No. 3 (1986): 17-23.