If you take a stroll along the corridor on the lower level of Hebrew College's Friedman building, you'll encounter visions of parched desert fields, the blue of the Mediterranean and the mystic aura of Safed. In minimalist prints, geometric silkscreens and watercolors, these and other abstract depictions of Israeli landscapes form the bulk of a new exhibit, Works on Paper: Israel in the 1970s, that represents the efforts of 12 artists during the first half of that decade.

"The exhibit captures one moment in the development of Israeli art," says collection donor Nitza Rosovsky, Israeli-born author and editor of Jerusalemwalks (1992) and Jerusalem from David to the Present (1996) and a member of the Hebrew College Board of Overseers. "What intrigued me about these works is that they differed from the images of Israeli art that I grew up with. They were not saturated with Jewish symbolism but captured the land and spirit of Israel through different eyes."

Indeed, the collection reflects a shift in Israeli art away from realism toward abstraction, a trend that started after World War I when new immigrants from Europe introduced Impressionism and other contemporary modes of artistic expression to the country. A number of the artists represented in the exhibit were influenced by the work of Joseph Zaritsky, who championed a style of lyrical abstraction.

The exhibit provides one example of how nature and landscape continued to be featured prominently in Israeli art, despite this trend toward abstraction, and it represents artists with strong roots and connections to Israel and its countryside. Born in the 1920s and 1930s for the most part, half are sabras; the rest came to Israel at a young age from Eastern Europe and Iraq.

BACK TO TOP