Moshe Castel

Restaurant in Montmartre, Paris, 1930s, Oil on cardboard, 45X61 cm. Signed. This painting from the Estate of Miriam Novitch, the first wife of the artist Moshe Castel, is being sold by the ”Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum”. The proceeds from the sale will fund a book memorializing the efforts of the Ghetto fighters. Miriam Novitch, the founder of the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, was born on March 1st, 1908 is Yuratishki and died on May 15th, 1990 in the Kibbutz of the Ghetto Fighters. ”I was loyal to the end to the will of the poet Yitchak Katanelson, that charged me with travelling between the ruins and gathering the tears of the Jewish People”, from her last words. Miriam Novitch was born in the village of Yuratishki in the Czar’s Russia (now a small city in Belarus). Her father encouraged her to acquire a wide breadth of knowledge, and after finishing her studies in a Gymnasium in Vilnius, she travelled to Paris to study teaching languages at the graduate school of Slavic languages while studying Philology and the History of Art at the Sorbonne. Around 1935, she met the Israeli artist, Moshe Castel (born 1909), in a coffee shop in Montparnasse. Many Jewish artists from the ’Paris School’ relaxed in this quarter of the city, on the left bank of the Seine. She also met Picasso and other prominent artists, that later donated works to the museum. The meeting with Castel led to a short marriage beginning in April of 1937. In 1940 Castel returned to Palestine. With the German occupation of France in 1940, Novitch, who was active in leftist Communist circles, joined an anti-Nazi underground organization. One of her tasks was smuggling letters from those sentenced to death in the prison camps of Compiegne, north of France, to their families. The letters were written on toilet paper and sometimes, on bits of towel. To earn money, Novitch taught private lessons in the Russian language to a member of the SS that was to be posted at the Caucasian oil stores. (Text continues in following lot page (No. 52))

Estimated price: $12,000 - 16,000

Sold for: 19550

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About: Moshe Castel

Moshe Castel was born in Jerusalem in 1909 to a religious family from Castile. At 13 years old he got accepted to the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design where he studied for three years. Afterward, Castel traveled to France and continued his education program at the Académie Julian, at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and at the Louvre Museum.After acquiring the technical knowledge required for oil painting, he held his first exhibition in Paris in May 1927. Later on, Castel's works were exhibited in important salons in Paris, at special exhibitions in London and Warsaw. In 1933 he returned to Israel, lived in Tel Aviv and presented a solo exhibition at the Technion in Haifa. He then moved to Safed, held a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum and in 1946 was awarded the Dizengoff Prize for painting and sculpture. In 1948 the group of artists Ofakim Hadashim was founded by him (along with others), the group embraced the foundations of abstract European art. Castel himself added oriental motifs to the abstract expressive style, influenced by what he called "Canaanite art", his later works include elements such as the ancient letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and are dealing with national and root themes and biblical stories combined with marks of archaic script. Castel's artistic clear identification is in working with basalt ground, creating a unique, symbolic and expressive style. By using national Jewish motifs his paintings have become more symbolic (Star of David, Moon and Star, Moslems, etc.). Castel's art aspires from Jewish sources on the one hand, and on the other hand is based on In-depth knowledge of world culture: from Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Persian, Indian and Russian art, to the most avant-garde trends in contemporary art. Castel participated in various exhibitions in Israel and around the world, including the Venice Biennial and the San Paolo Biennial in Brazil in which he won an award. His murals and reliefs can be found in many places in Israel and around the world (El Al offices in New York, the Knesset building in Jerusalem, the President's House in Jerusalem, the Israel Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan, etc.).