1. "Neighbors Gathering" from the series "Safed and her People"/ Copper relief / 36X24 cm / Signed
2. "Idl mit fidl (folk song)" - Jews with a violin, from the series "A World that Was"/ Silver relief / 35X23.5 cm / Signed
3. Four Klezmorim / Copper relief / 28X35 cm / Signed and dated
4. Fiddler on the Roof / Copper relief / 35X30 cm / Not signed
Artist Arieh Merzer was born in 1905 to a Hassidic family in a town not far from Warsaw. Studied in a Heder and Beit Midrash. In 1927 started to create copper reliefs with Jewish motifs and in 1928 exhibited his works for the first time in an exhibition in Warsaw. In 1930 he moved to Paris where he studied and varied his creations which now included universal motifs. Merzer was a committee member of the Jewish Artists Society in Paris. In 1943 moved to Switzerland where he published an album of graphic works around Jewish motifs. In 1945 he immigrated to Eretz Israel and started right away to exhibit his works. During the Independence War he was one of the first artists to settle in Safed where he lived for the rest of his life.
Enclosed:
1. Portfolio “Safed and her People, eighteen copper reliefs”(Artists Colony, Safed,1965).
2. Portfolio, “Arieh Merzer, A World that Was, 15 hammered Silver and copper works”, introduction by D.B. Malkin (Artists Colony, Safed, 1956), hand-signed by Merzer.