Ben-Zion Magal

Ben-Zion Magal (1908 - 1999) ) was born in 1908 inKishinev in present-day Moldavia. He graduated from the ArtAcademy there. In 1933 he immigrated to Israel together with his wife, Chaya, an artist in her own right, and settled in Haifa. He brought with him artistic talent, experience and memories from his father's home and of the warm charm of the Jewish shtetl. However, at that time Israel wasPalestine under British Mandate (1923-1948) and impoverished culturally, without support of museums, galleries or any institutional backing. It was a very challenging environment for an artist to survive in. Ben-Zion and Chaya started literally from scratch. Together with other Haifa artists, he founded the Haifa Association of Artists. Later he was one of the first members of the Israel Association of Painters and Sculptors and was among the founders of the artistic village Ein-Hod, near Haifa. Magal's style is mainly expressionistic. The composition of the beautiful Israeli landscape, the desert and the oriental aspects are strongly expressed in the sunlight of the land. In this he follows the main trend of Israeli painters who saw, from the beginning, the landscape as one of their most important subjects. Magal's other topics deal with Jewish life and traditions in the East-European shtetl.