Art History through a Jewish Lens: From Bezalel to Agam

What is the common thread that connects Jewish art through the ages?

Join us in discovering 3,300 years of Jewish art, from the interior of the Tabernacle in the desert to the Agam room in the Pompidou Museum in Paris. As the Second Commandment was interpreted as a prohibition against representational art, Jewish artists turned instead to ritual objects. These objects varied stylistically, thematically and emotionally, crafted by Jewish artists who were born in different countries and came from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

What binds these artists and their work together is the running theme of “Art with a Jewish heart.” From antiquity to the present day, Jewish artists produced mosaic synagogue floors, exquisite Torah decorations, magnificent illuminated manuscripts, beautiful Chanukah lamps, and seder plates. Discuss the reasons why nineteenth-century Jewish painters like Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Isidor Kaufman, and Maurycy Gottlieb went mainstream, and learn how Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism laid the groundwork for Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine, Rothko and other Jewish giants of twentieth-century art.

Ellaine Rosen has taught and lectured on Jewish history, Jewish art, the Holocaust, and secular art for over sixty years. She holds a Bachelor of Science from Columbia University, a Bachelor of Religious Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, a Master of Education from Harvard University, and successfully completed all coursework for a PhD (except the dissertation) in Judaic Studies, Religion, and Art History from the University of Pittsburgh. She is happily married to her husband of 59 years. They have two daughters and five grandsons. She currently resides in Naples, Florida where she is a docent at the Holocaust Museum as well as The Naples Art Association.

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