Tel-Hai Magazine 2022

The Laila Schwartz Collection Joint curators: Dr. Gal Shachar, Laila Schwartz and Stella Carasso

By Dr. Gal Shahar, Director of the Tel-Hai Institute of Art

viewer. In lieu of payment for her mod eling, Laila would request some of the works the artists created and these have accumulated to form this unique collec tion, from within which her life story acts as a source of inspiration. The collection documents her image in line, color and material, from various perspectives. The artist Maya Cohen Levy describes the uniqueness of the collection: “Laila’s col lection of works is really a map of the world of art. There’s nothing else like it anywhere; it’s a collection of works by excellent artists created around a single

person, and spanning many years.” Among the artists presented in the exhi bition: Igael Tumarkin, Menashe Ka dishman, Meira Shemesh, Avigdor Stei matzsky, Maya Cohen Levy, Yedid Rubin, Anton Biberman, Ofer Lalush, Jan Rauchwerger and Osias Hofstater. Laila Schwartz – survivor, fighter, nude model “When I was born, I was raw material, alone in the world with no identity,” Lai la explains. Laila was born in Cairo in

The permanent exhibition of the Laila Schwartz Collection contains an exten sive array of drawings, paintings and sculptures created by many of Israel’s leading artists. The collection represents a rare documentation of a period in the history of Israeli art. All the works ex hibited have a common subject – Laila Schwartz, who worked as a nude model for some fifty years. But unlike the tradi tional model, passively posing at the be hest of the artist, Laila was characteristi cally independent, playing an active role in the artistic process, and gazing at the

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