Ardon, Mordecai

Mordecai Ardon, Mordecai also spelled Mordekhai, original name Max Bronstein, (born July 13, 1896, Tuchow, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]—died June 18, 1992, Jerusalem, Israel), eminent Israeli painter who combined jewel-like, brilliantly coloured forms with virtuoso brushwork. He created modern, semiabstract paintings that are deeply moving.

Ardon emigrated from his native Poland to Germany, spending the years 1921–25 at the Weimar Bauhaus, where he mainly studied with the painters Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. These studies were followed by work for about one year with Max Doerner at the Academy of Decorative Arts in Munich. After a brief career in Berlin, Ardon fled Nazi Germany in 1933 to go to Palestine. Settling in Jerusalem, he became a teacher in 1935 at the country’s chief art academy, the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, and from 1940 to 1952 he was its director. From 1952 to 1963 he served as artistic adviser to the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Most of Ardon’s paintings from the 1930s and from his later period are landscapes that transform Jerusalem’s hills and valleys into vibrant tones and stirring rhythms. Ardon became more spiritual and more interested in Jewish history and tradition after his move to Jerusalem, and his work became increasingly abstract and poetic. Numerous canvases reflect his attachment to ancient Middle-Eastern culture and his love for Kabbalistic literature, out of which he created a vocabulary of pictorial symbols. Working on a monumental scale, Ardon painted several triptychs depicting subjects such as war, the Holocaust, and the earthly and divine Jerusalem. From 1982 to 1984 he worked on a stained-glass window entitled Isaiah’s Vision of Eternal Peace for the National Jewish University and Library in Jerusalem.