Ben-Zion (1897-1987) Reared by his father for the rabbinate, Ben Zion Weiman came from Poland to America in 1920. After turning to art (and shortening his name), he became a founding member of The Ten, the 1930’s avant-garde group, with Ilya Bolotowsky, Lee Gatch, Adolph Gottleib, Mark Rothko, and others. Ben-Zion’s work is represented in many museums throughout the country including the Metropolitan, the Whitney, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Phillips Collection, Washington. The Jewish Museum in New York opened in 1948 with a Ben-Zion exhibition.

Ben-Zion brought his direct, powerful expressionism to Biblical subjects not only in his paintings, but also in four intaglio portfolios of eighteen prints each. The first three portfolios, Biblical Themes (1951), Prophets (1952), and The Book of Ruth, Job, and Song of Songs (1954), were published by Curt Valentin, who was also Max Beckman’s dealer. The fourth, Judges and Kings, delayed for ten years because of Valentin’s untimely death in 1954, was printed by La Couriere in Paris, who also printed etchings by Picasso, and published by Graphophile. This exhibit features the 18 prints from the Biblical Themes portfolio.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
The name of this artist, one of the most brilliant lights of the 20th Century art world, is forever linked with the Bible in the formation by the French Government of the Musee National Message Biblique Marc Chagall in Nice. After moving to Paris from Russia he began a suite of etchings on the Bible for Vollard in 1931. Again he turned to Biblical themes in 1956 when the French magazine Verve published a suite of color lithographs of Chagall’s Biblical themes in a double issue, 33/34.

Four years later a larger suite, Drawings for the Bible, was published in both a French edition (Verve 37-38), and in an American edition (Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York). This suite of prints is complete in this exhibition. It includes 24 original color lithographs that were printed by Mourlot Freres, for the American edition, and a book cover lithograph that was specially designed for this edition.