Background
Gabriel Talphir was born in Stanislaw, Galicia, then ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Gabriel Talphir was born in Stanislaw, Galicia, then ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Later he studied at art at the University of Vienna and taught at several Jewish schools in Vilna, Zamosc, Lwow, and Warsaw.
He died in 1990. When World War I broke out, he was sent to study at a Jewish high school in Vienna. In 1924, Talphir published his first poems in Polish Jewish periodicals. Later, he included them in his collection of verse, Three Poems.
His most well-known poems are Legion (1925), Jazz Band, a rhythmic poem (1927), Hunger (1928), and The Scattered Manifest (1928).
Talphir also wrote and published art criticism. In 1932, he founded Gazith, a journal on arts and culture.
Foreign years, "Gazith" was the only Jewish periodical dedicated to the plastic arts Gazith published prose, poetry, essays, reviews and illustrations of art and architecture.
Of the essays published during its first year, a third were dedicated to visual art
Most were about European Jewish artists, among them Libermann, Menkes, Mintchine, Modigliani, Pascin, Pissaro and Soutine. Talphir was also a translator. Among the many books he translated were the works of Ilya Ehrenburg, Ève Curie (the daughter of Madame Curie), and Franz Werfel.
He also edited, published and translated art books and albums.
In 1991, on the first anniversary of his death, all his poems were re-released by Gazith. A collection of artist"s portrait photographs and letters from Talphir"s estate is found today at the Information Center for Israeli Art in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
He was a member of the Zionist youth group Hechalutz and immigrated to Palestine in 1925.