BEN-ZVI, ZEEV

BEN-ZVI, ZEEV (1904–1952), Israeli sculptor, whose work influenced a generation of sculptors. Ben-Zvi was born in Ryki, Poland and studied at the Warsaw Academy of Art before immigrating to Palestine in 1924. He entered the bezalel School in Jerusalem that year and studied under boris schatz . Ben-Zvi specialized in portrait heads in beaten copper and molded plaster, which he treated in a cubist manner. When the New Bezalel School was opened in 1936 Ben-Zvi was appointed teacher of sculpture. During 1937 he visited France and England. On the outbreak of World War II, he executed the first model of Outcry – a hand lifted to the heavens. Outcry symbolized the horror and rebellion of Jews against the Holocaust in Europe – a subject to which Ben-Zvi frequently returned. In 1947, he executed his moving monument, In Memory of the Children of the Diaspora, at Mishmar ha-Emek. From 1947 to 1949 he tried to alleviate the hardships of the illegal immigrants detained by the British government in the Cyprus detention camps by teaching them art. Ben-Zvi's works are to be found in museums and private collections in Israel and Great Britain. He won the Israel Prize for art in 1953 and the Dizengoff Prize in 1952. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Gamzu, Ben-Zvi, Sculptures (1955). (Fritz Schiff)