Jacob Steinhardt

 Jacob Steinhardt, The City, 1913

Jacob Steinhardt (1887 –1968) was a painter and woodcut artist, who worked mainly in woodcuts depicting biblical and other Jewish subjects. He was born in the Silesian town Zerkow (now Poland). Steinhardt studied at the University of Art in Berlin in 1906, then took painting lessons with Lovis Corinth and, together with fellow student Ludwig Meidner, learned engraving with Hermann Struck in 1907.

 Jacob Steinhardt, Workers Uprising - Red Flag, c. 1920

From 1908 to 1910 Steinhardt lived in Paris, where he associated with Henri Matisse and Théophile Steinlen, and in 1911 he was in Italy. When World War I broke out, he enlisted in the German army, and served on the Eastern Front in Poland and Lithuania, and then in Macedonia. After the war, he returned to Berlin where he participated in the artist group New Sezession and joined forces with Ludwig Meidner and Richard Janthur to found "Die Pathetiker" (The pathetic ones), a group that showed their works at Herwarth Walden's gallery. 

Jakob Steinhardt, Sabbath in the village, 1923

 When the Nazis came into power in 1933, Steinhardt emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, and opened an art school in Jerusalem in 1934. In 1948 he closed the art school and became Chairman of the Graphics Department at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. From 1954-57 he was the Director of that school. Steinhardt died 1968 and was buried in Nahariya.

 Jacob Steinhardt, Deportation, 1946

You can view more works by Jacob Steinhardt here in my Flickr set.