I Have Soil Under My Feet

"About thirty years ago, it became clear to me that I could still meet the Y.L.G, Bialik, and Tchernikhovsky of Israeli painting. This idea fascinated me, and I got closer to many of them. I met with them, saw their paintings, and heard their words and stories. It is about them that I tell in this book." – With these words, Shlomo Shva opens his book.

The act of creation is an act of choice, of decision-making, and emphasizing a certain reality, a reality that is generally subjective. The artist's personal world is then revealed, through the meeting of their works with each other and in comparison to other creators who came from the same reality but discovered different worlds. The principle of discovering an internal world from an existing-objective reality, not giving up on the subjective truth of a thinking and creating person, is an idea that recurs in different ways throughout the book, and serves as a key principle for understanding the world of these early painters.

The story that Shlomo Shva brings from the painter Giladi illustrates this principle beautifully: "...Once, Shimshon Holtzman and Mordechai Levanon visited me. We only had one box of watercolor paints. We dipped our brushes into those same colors, painted the same landscape, and three different paintings were created: Mordechai Levanon’s was spiritual, almost like a prayer to the Creator; Shimshon Holtzman’s was springlike, joyful, and light; mine was dark, heavy, and dramatic, and all, as mentioned, from the same box of colors..." (p. 134).

The struggle for self-expression, for creative truth, recurs in all the stories. From this, the great difficulty of those painters emerges. In the beginning of their lives as artists, they had no shaped reality to contend with, from which they could learn, compare, agree, or rebel.

In the Land of Israel, in the 1920s, there were no galleries, not even a single art museum, and the number of art collectors was tiny. Therefore, the role of these painters was to create a new reality; both internal and external.

This struggle to discover a new land, to build a real world alongside discovering an internal-spiritual continent, is the common thread that links all these artists. The ways of dealing with and the outcomes of this struggle are expressed in a personal manner by each one and reveal an artistic "creed" that, over time, becomes an "ism" in Israeli art.

This exposure, this process of discovery, is the fascinating part of the book, and this is its strength and importance.

Shlomo Shva writes in almost stenographic language, carefully giving an equal number of pages to each artist. Despite this strict formal structure, reading the book becomes a journey of discovery, and by the end of it, the reader knows, understands, and is familiar with. As the reading process progresses, another layer is added, another step is revealed – by the end of the reading, the reader will have a complete picture, consisting of artistic statements, debates, polemics, gossip, information, and life stories. For example: information, almost gossip: a large number of painters from the 1920s traveled to Paris, which at the time was the world center of art. Those who went met with 'the seamstress.' The seamstress is the one who sewed Nahum Gutman's pajamas, the seamstress is the sculptor Hannah Orloff, who took care of meeting the young artists with Parisian artists.

Through reading, the reader discovers the world of the pioneers, those who lived in the cities. The focus is especially on Tel Aviv, both its material and spiritual construction.

One of the beautiful sentences in the book relates to Nahum Gutman: "Nahum Gutman created the mythology of early Tel Aviv, a city without sorrow, whose inhabitants always celebrate and see themselves as messengers of redemption. I do not know if that is how it truly was. Gutman is perhaps the only artist in the world who painted a city and also founded it, or at least created its image as it is accepted by us..." (p. 27).

In the same documentary style, Shlomo Shva describes the financial difficulties of the painters as part of the broader economic challenges that the community faced at that time. In this way, the book fulfills itself as a historical document.

Davar provided considerable employment for these painters in the early stages: "...From four in the morning until seven in the morning, Levanon, Priver, Fine, and Streichman would distribute Davar to its subscribers, and were free to paint the rest of the day and debate for hours about the purposes of art..." (p. 113). Nahum Gutman wrote and painted for Davar LeYeladim, Arieh Navon, even as a student in Paris, earned his living through cartoons and genre scenes that he sent to Davar, and later, for thirty years, continued to create cartoons for the newspaper. Through the book, a picture of the cultural life of the city's residents at that time is formed. The cafes were a meeting place for poets, painters, and actors. The café also represented the artistic worldview of its visitors, in the sense of "Tell me your artistic positions, and I will tell you which café your friends sit in..." And here is how Shlomo Shva describes it: "...The debates, conversations, and leisure activities gathered in two cafés, which were also two 'schools' – 'Sheleg Levanon' on Allenby Street by the sea and Retzky's at the top of Allenby Street. At 'Sheleg Levanon' sat Alterman, Pen, Navon, Handler, Leah Goldberg, Zvi Shor, Avigdor Hameiri, Streichman, and at Café Retzky – Shlonsky and Horowitz, Steinman, and Norman, who went to war against the 'old generation' of writers – Bialik and his friends. It wasn’t long before a new artists' café opened – 'Ararat' on Ben Yehuda Street, near Idelson Street. Its owner, Luba, was dark-haired with dark eyes. There was something gypsy-like about her, and she was loved by the artists. Later, she opened 'Keshet,' which was then bought by Yizhak Keshet, and it became internationally famous..." (p. 113)

Despite common characteristics, Shlomo Shva makes an effort to present the uniqueness of each artist and their contribution to the developing world of painting in the country, thus providing firsthand information about creative struggles, the creative process, and the path to its realization. The testimonies provided in the name of the painter are raw material for a deeper understanding of the work of that artist and the development of painting in the country.

The devotion of the painters to the landscape and the place in which they are situated is truly astounding. It is interesting to read their interpretations of their relationship with this landscape, like the words Shlomo Shva brings from Tzion Tagger: "I have land under my feet, the land of Jaffa and the sands of Tel Aviv, here I grew up and here I paint" (p. 43). Or Castel's words, who, from wherever he wandered in the world, always returned to Safed: "I lived Safed with all my being. In me lives the memory of my ancestors who lived on this land, who thought and felt it. A stranger will not understand this. Only someone who grew from this land, like a tree, will understand. Like I grew..." (p. 65). Or the words of Zaritsky, the 'Master' – as Shva describes him, the teacher-artist to whom people made pilgrimages. Zaritsky, who broke boundaries of place, cannot ignore the influences of the land and the commitment to it: "A painter in France or England wakes up in the morning, paints, and around him stands a city that has existed for hundreds of years. He doesn’t know, and doesn’t care to know, when the street was built and when the house he lives in was erected. Here, the painter knows when the street was built and when the neighboring house was built because they were built before his eyes. He saw when there was nothing and then saw how the house rose, how the street rose, and how the city was built. And so the painter here must also be a partner..." (p. 87).

Shlomo Shva uses his encounters with the artists to pay a debt. From the critics and curators, who did not always know how to properly appreciate, relate to the creators and their works. The first museum in the country was established in Tel Aviv in 1931. Many of the artists who began creating in the 1920s were already "established" in their artistic statements, yet they did not receive recognition during their lifetimes.