Moshe Castel, a Jerusalem-born artist who achieved world renown and helped establish the famous artist’s colony in Safed, died Dec. 12. His age was reported as either 82 or 85.
He was born to a prominent family descended from Castilian Jews that was expelled from Spain in 1492 and settled in Palestine.
Castel was educated at religious schools before he enrolled in the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem in the 1920s. In 1927, he moved to Paris, where he continued to study and paint until the German invasion of France in 1940.
Although his paintings hung in major museums and galleries around the world, Castel was largely ignored in Israel during his final years.
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