Itzhak Danziger 1916 - 1977

Itzhak Danziger was born in Berlin in 1916 and moved to Palestine in 1923. From 1934-1937 Danziger studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. During the 1940s he worked in Paris with Zadkine and Brancusi. In the 1950s he exhibited in London at the Institute of Contemporary Art. He is considered to be one of Israel's most important sculptors.  His work, which consists largely of environmental pieces, has been exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. In 1969 he was awarded the Sandberg Prize by the Israel Museum. He died in 1977.

This sculpture clearly reflects the artist's admiration for Assyrian and Egyptian art which he saw exhibited at the nearby British Museum. Describing another work from this period, the art historian Avram Kampft writes: "Itzhak Danziger's Nimrod, carved in 1939, pointed to a new direction in Israeli art and heralded a trend which was to gather force in the 1940s and 1950s, a trend characterized by the culling of motifs from the myths of the Bible and from the art of the ancient people who inhabited the region. This archaic art was characterized by elements of distortion, geometricisation and abstraction. The artists of that period embodied in their work the collective experiences of their generation, looking for metaphors and parallels for contemporary events in ancient sources. These artists aimed to give expression to the upheavals which stirred their times in terms of archetypal images of the culture and myths of the ancient Near East." (Avram Kampf, Chagall to Kitaj, Jewish Experience in 20^th Century Art, London, 1990, pages 120-121).