Mordecai Ardon was an Israeli painter, who represented Abstract Art, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism movements. He combined jewel-like, brilliantly coloured forms with virtuoso brushwork.
Background
Mordecai Ardon was born on July 13, 1896 in Tuchów, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (present-day Tuchów, Poland). He grew up in an impoverished family and was one of 12 children of a religious Jewish watchmaker. Having run away from home at the age of 13, he wanted to go to Vienna, but circumstances and the First World War prevented him. After the war, Ardon left for Paris and later lived in Berlin. In 1933, the painter settled down in Jerusalem in Mandate Palestine. Three years later, in 1936, he received a Palestinian citizenship and changed his name to Mordecai Ardon.
Education
Initially, during the period from 1921 to 1925, Ardon studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar – the premier European avant-garde center at the time. Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger and Johannes Itten were his mentors. The influence of the Bauhaus and especially of Paul Klee on his artistic development was profound and lasted a life time. Also, in 1926, Mordecai entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he studied under the guidance of Max Doerner.
In 1974, he obtained Doctor of Honor degree from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Career
After a brief career in Berlin, Ardon left Nazi Germany in 1933 to go to Palestine. Settling down in Jerusalem, Ardon was appointed a teacher at Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts (present-day Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design) in 1935. Some time later, in 1940, he was promoted to the post of a director of the academy, a position he held till 1952, when he started to serve as an artistic adviser to Israel Ministry of Education and Culture. It was in 1963, that he finally retired and continued to focus solely on his artwork.
The first 15 years after his retirement were divided between Paris and Jerusalem, but after his wife's Miriam death in 1981, he lived mostly in Paris. His long stay there enabled him to look at his homeland from a distance and react to events in Israel and the Jews more clearly. Thus, in 1974, Ardon painted a triptych symbolic of the Yom Kippur War. In 1977, he created another triptych, entitled "Entebbe".
During the period from 1982 to 1984, the painter worked on a stained-glass window, entitled "Isaiah's Vision of Eternal Peace", for the National Jewish University and Library in Jerusalem.
Views
Ardon believed in pure art devoid of any political or social message. He believed that a painting should be appreciated and judged solely by its inherent artistic elements, color, composition and their interplay. Also, the painter rejected literary, symbolic or, indeed, any other additional meaning, attributed to a work of art.
Quotations:
"It seemed to me that I recognised every stone. I walked down the back streets on the way to the Wailing Wall and suddenly I found that religious mystery which I had sought elsewhere in vain. And suddenly after all those years in Germany, I became myself again — Mordecai Bronstein from Galicia, who went out into the world searching for a place where he could express himself. From the age of 13 until now I had sought it — and yesterday I found it. I forgot all that I had learned. It was as if I had suddenly been bequeathed the inheritance I awaited, as if I had to continue from the time I was bar-mitzvahed and ran away to seek something blindly. They spoke to me in Hebrew and I understood even though I had not heard a word of Hebrew since I was 13. Everything rose to the surface again and I returned to the same point: to begin everything anew."
