ABSTRACT

Indeed, for the first nine decades of Zionist settlement (from the 1880s to the 1960s) explicitly religious Jewish artworks were barely visible within the hegemonic core of the fine arts field in Palestine/Israel. After a brief discussion of the problematic engagement of religious Jews with visual arts production, this chapter explores the transformative practices and dynamics undergone by the Israeli fine arts field through three major epochs, from the initial stages of its development at the end of the nineteenth century to the present. The task that Jewish art could perform for Zionism, according to Buber, was, first and foremost, national education: Jewish art is for us a great educator. The Zionist movement stirred exuberance and hope among Jewish intellectuals and artists in its formative stages, at the very beginning of the twentieth century. However, personal and social traumatic events re-routed Schatz, now relieved of royal patronage, to take an active and leading part in the Zionist movement.