Bezalel, The Academy of Art and Design, first opened in 1906. Since then it has been rightly considered as Israel’s representative art institution. The founders of Zionism considered new Jewish art to be an integral part of the national struggle. They sought after a form of art that would form a new bond with a lost aspect of The Jew, rendering him into a new whole. Art was therefore assigned a national role. With its help, it was hoped, Zionism would be internalized, and past and present, individual and group, would become one. The foundation of Bezalel was therefore a prerequisite of ideological and propagandist requirements. Thus, Boris Schatz’s vision as the founder of Bezalel was intertwined with the financing Zionist leadership’s national vision. Bezalel was integrated into the desire to produce a visual Hebraic environment whose products, when sold throughout the Jewish world, would become a tool for Zionist propaganda.
Is Hebraic-art necessarily a Zionist icon and an Israeli art? When Schatz’ students drew symbolic landscape as a national icon, did they draw the new Israel? Such are the questions that this paper asks. Characterized here, through the symbols and icons that constitute it, is the artistic language in Schatz’ Bezalel.