Oil on canvas, displaying still life with an apple cut in half on a tablecloth and table with a sharp pointy knife the apple was cut with.

Painted in 1958.


Yosl Bergner- also known as Josl, was an Israeli painter. He was born in Vienna, Austria and grew up in Warsaw, Poland.

Yosl emigrated to Australia in 1937 and studied in the National Gallery School in Melbourne until the outbreak of World War II. He served for four and a half years in the Australian Army, and later continued his studies at the Art School.

He left Australia in 1948 and after two years of traveling and exhibiting in Paris, Montreal and New York City, he settled in Israel. He lived in Safed until moving to Tel Aviv in 1957 with his wife, the artist Audrey Bergner.

Bergner designed scenery and costumes for the Yiddish and Hebrew theatres, particularly for the plays of Nisim Aloni, and has illustrated many books. The acme of Bergner’s paintings is his allegorical works; he uses kitchen tools such as squashed pots, oil lamps, wrecks and cracked jugs and he anthropomorphizes them. These old instruments symbolize distorted and poor world of wars, secrets and darkness.

Signed in Hebrew and dated 58 (upper right); inscribed in Hebrew (on the stretcher)

Excellent condition
21¼ by 32 in. (54 by 81.3 cm)
Framed: 33⅜ by 42 in. (84.8 by 106.7 cm)

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Lot #378

Yosl Bergner 1920 - 2017 'Still Life With Apples'

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