Living Jewish Art [Hardcover]

The Work of Itshak Holtz
The first book on the foremost painter of contemporary Jewish life-a beautifully illustrated oversize volume

The art of Itshak Holtz (1925–2018) is an intimate guide to the Jewish world, approached with a sensitivity, confidence, and thorough familiarity that only someone living and breathing it could attain. Holtz was born in a small town near Warsaw and moved with his family to Jerusalem when he was ten years old; he pursued his artistic training there and in New York, at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design.

From the beginning of his artistic career, Holtz was drawn to depict the life of the Orthodox communities of which he himself was a part, in both New York and Jerusalem. His subjects were not idealized memories of the imagined past, but the real people around him, continuing an ancient way of life today. Holtz’s work envelops the viewer with its warmth and offers a sympathetic and honest insight into the inner world of his subjects, whom he pictures in their prayer houses, on their streets, engaged in their daily affairs.

This lavishly illustrated volume surveys Holtz’s incomparable paintings, drawings, and prints of Jewish life. Organized by subject matter, it presents his scenes of worship, celebration, work, and everyday life, as well as his landscapes and portraits. An introductory essay by Richard McBee, the noted critic of Jewish art, traces Holtz’s biography and artistic development.

Editorial Reviews:
"Itshak Holtz was a representational painter, an extraordinary vocation for an Orthodox Jew, whose evocative paintings reflect the commonplace, the daily activities of people in Williamsburg or Meah Shearim, working, shopping, or praying. The colors he used are from an Impressionist palette: the shaded pinks and beiges of Jerusalem’s ancient stones, the perfection of its azure skies, the verdancy of its trees and grasses dappled by sunlight. Holtz’s greatest power was in recreating the everyday life and scenes that he loved, his almost mystical ability to invoke the neshama-the inner spiritual soul of the scene and its characters. This was the amazing genius of Holtz, a pious painter, for whom being a good Jew was everything."
- Sylvia Axelrod Herskowitz, Director Emerita, Yeshiva University Museum

About the Author
Richard McBee is a painter of biblical subject matter and a writer on Jewish art. He covered the Jewish art scene for the Jewish Press from 2000 to 2014; he has also written for the Forward, Jewish Week, Jewish Ideas Daily, and Mosaic magazine. A founding member of the Jewish Art Salon, McBee continues to exhibit, lecture, and curate exhibitions of Jewish art.

Binding: Hardcover
Size: 9.8" x 11.3"
Pages: 224
Language: English
Publisher: Abbeville Press
Published Date: December 10, 2024
ISBN-10: 0789215012
ISBN-13: 978-0789215017

Living Jewish Art [Hardcover]
The Work of Itshak Holtz
By: Richard McBee