Background
Boris Schatz was born on December 23, 1866 in Varniai, Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania).
Boris Schatz was born on December 23, 1866 in Varniai, Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania).
Since 1883 to 1885, Boris studied at the Vilnius School of Drawing. In 1889, he went to Paris to study at the Académie Cormon, where he was trained as a sculptor and painter in a traditional, academic style.
Boris started his career as an art teacher in Vilnius, giving private lessons. Later, in 1888, he left for Warsaw, where he taught art in Jewish schools.
While in Paris, Boris began to achieve recognition for his own work and at the invitation of Prince Ferdinand, Schatz moved to Bulgaria in 1895 as a court sculptor and there founded the Royal Academy of Art in Sofia.
In 1903, he met Theodor Herzl and became an ardent Zionist. At the Fifth Zionist Congress of 1905, he proposed creating a Jewish art school. In 1906, Boris founded an art center in Jerusalem, later named "Bezalel" after Bezalel Ben Uri, the biblical artisan, who designed the Tabernacle and its ritual objects. In the following years, Schatz organized exhibitions of his students' works in Europe and the United States.
Bezalel art school was opened in Jerusalem in 1906. Schatz added a small museum to the school, which was the foundation for the Bezalel Museum and later the Israel Museum. In 1929, Bezalel art school was closed due to financial difficulties.
Schatz married Eugenia (Genia) Zhirmunsky in 1889. Their daughter Angelika was born in 1897. Some time later, Schatz's wife left him and took their daughter with her.
In 1911, Schatz married Olga Pevzner, who was a writer and art history teacher. The couple gave birth to two children — Zahara Schatz and Bezalel Schatz, both artists.