“Tiberias is the most wonderful part of my land,” says Miss Shulamith Wittenberg, first native Palestinian artist to exhibit here. “Its beauties are a blend of mountain country, lake and desert. Although my home is in Jerusalem, for vacations I always go there. It is a rich field for the artist,” she told a Bulletin reporter.
She has studied under tutelage of the Parisian cubist, Andre Lhot. She is the wife of a native New Yorker. The most indelible influences on her theories of living and painting have arisen from her rural Oriental upbringing, she believes, and she admits nothing of the new order of things into her work.
“Most painters who visit Palestine, or even live there for a few years, see everything in bright colors,” she asserts. But for one who knows the land there is a haze of heat that covers the scene with a certain dryness. It brings with it something gray and a definite impression of age. In my pictures the colors are never strong and the subjects that interest me most-the ones most suited to the land, too-are old. That is why I have chosen to paint the Yemenite Jew, the ancient Arab and the old walls of the old city.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
