Sketch for a "Shana Tovah" greeting card by Shalom Sebba (1897-1975), 1949.
Tempera on green paper. Signed and dated in pencil.
The illustration, from a series of biblical illustrations, depicts Abraham in Parashat "Lech Lecha". Inscribed "Happy New Year" in Hebrew and English.
Sketch: approx. 12X10 cm (22X15 cm leaf). Good condition. Stains.

Four drawings by David Shneur (1905-1988).
Ink and watercolor on card. All four are signed "D. Shneur" (Hebrew).
The drawings (illustrations for a book?) depict children in Palestine – the sea-shore, an orchard, a dirt path in a rural settlement and an empty lot between urban buildings.
Approx. 27X25 cm. Good-fair condition. Blemishes and stains (mainly to margins). Small holes to some corners. Peelings and traces of mounting on verso of one of the drawings. Strip of paper attached top of one drawing (with tape on verso) – addition to the drawing.

Naftali Bezem (1924-2918), Lion of Judah / Candle-Lighting.
Oil on canvas. Signed.
40.5X23 cm. Good condition.
Naftali Bezem (1924-2018), born in Essen, Germany, immigrated to Palestine in 1939 with the "Youth Aliyah" and during the years 1943-1946 studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art. His parents, who had remained in Germany, perished in the Holocaust. After graduating from Bezalel, he taught art at the detention camps in Cyprus. Then he lived several years in Paris, and upon his return to Israel, in 1952, worked as an artist of the Kibbutz Movement. Many of his works over the years dealt with the Holocaust, Aliyah and the revival of Israel, examining the Israeli public, social and political spheres. In 1957, he received the Dizengoff Prize, for his painting "In the Courtyard of the Third Temple", which he created in response to the Kafr Qasim massacre. In 1970, he was invited to paint the ceiling mural in the main reception room at the President's Residence, Jerusalem.
"Naftali Bezem was among the generation of Israeli artists whose personality formed during the days of tension and unrest, the pioneering spirit, the striving for political independence, the War of Independence and the days of 'People in a Dream' of the establishment of the state. This is the rock from which he was hewn; this is the foundation of his social persona; this is the secret of his being rooted in the homeland and the layer of society that strives for progress; this is the secret of his devotion to the views of the country and its building. Yet the roots of his soul are deeply embedded in the base of the Jewish environment in the Diaspora, in the home of father and mother, who never got to immigrate to the hoped-for land […] he held on to a series of symbols, which might imply Jewish elements, to trigger associations of the Jewish town and its past life, and to serve as kind of an optical-visual escort for the lament for the Jewish home that was lost. Mute, slaughtered fish, the crying Lion of Judah, the traditional candlesticks and other daily artifacts from the Jewish house and the like appear in most of his pictures – individually or in tandem, implicitly or explicitly; all this to inspire the picture and its observer with an atmosphere of remembrance and lament". (from: Naftali Bezem [Hebrew], by Zvi Zohar. Published by "Sifriyat Poalim", [1966]; enclosed).

32 Drawings by Ruth Schloss (1922-2013).
Watercolor, pen, charcoal, India ink and felt pen on paper.
Most of the drawings are individual or group portraits. Other drawings depict animals, views and workers at work. Two of the drawings are signed "Ruth Schloss" (Hebrew).
Ruth Schloss (1922-2013) was born in Nuremberg and immigrated to Palestine with her family in 1935. At sixteen she began her studies at Bezalel, then joined the group of founders of Kibbutz Lehavot HaBashan. Schloss devoted her talents to the art and printing enterprises of the kibbutz movement, working as an illustrator for the "Mishmar Liladim" newspaper, and as a book cover designer for "Sifriyat Poalim". From ca. 1950 to 1952 she studied art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and after returning to Israel she left her kibbutz, due to the rift in the Kibbutz Movement. Schloss was a member of the Communist Party and her paintings, in the style of Social Realism, often conveyed a socialist message of exposing societal power relations and class distinctions. She painted the weaker members of society – downtrodden women, hungry children, workers and residents of transit camps. Later, she turned to the lives of women, to the helplessness of birth and the decline of old age – all of which she painted with the sensitivity of a woman seeing human-beings rooted in their surroundings, as the poet Nathan Zach wrote of her – "her motto remained the same over the years. Life itself. Without any embellishment".
Approx. 20.5X14.5 to 25X35 cm. Good overall condition. Stains. Few tears and small open tears along the edges of some leaves. Pieces of paper for reinforcement on verso of one work, at the corners.
Literature:
1. Broader Horizons, 120 Years of Israeli Art, from the Ofrat Collection to the Levin Collection. Selected Works, Part II, by Gideon Ofrat. Jerusalem: Vienna-Jerusalem Foundation for Israeli Art, 2013. Hebrew.
2. Ruth Schloss, Retrospective. Curator: Tali Tamir. Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod website. Hebrew.