Ardon (Bronstein), Mordechai

(b. 1896)

   Israel painter. Ardon was born into a religious family in Poland, the eldest of fourteen children; and the Bible and the Talmud played an important part in his education. After World War I, he went to Germany and studied art at the famous Bauhaus in Weimar. With the rise of HITLER he left Germany in 1933 and settled in Jerusalem.

   In 1943 Ardon became director of Israel’s leading school of art, the Bezalel, and in 1952. was appointed artistic adviser to the Ministry of Education and Culture.

   Ardon’s work became steadily more abstract while retaining echoes of Israel landscape and symbolic overtones. His pictures are marked by strong forms and luminous colour. In 1954, he won the UNESCO prize at the Venice Biennale. His work hangs in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1964 he received the Israel Prize.