Israel Hershberg

Israel Hershberg (1948 - ) is a figurative painter who lives and works in Jerusalem , Israel .¹ Israel Hershberg was born on November 7, 1948 in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria. He immigrated with his family to Israel in 1949 and lived there until he was nine. In 1958, the family resettled in the United States. In 1966-1968, he attended the Brooklyn Museum School in Brooklyn New York . In 1972, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute , and in 1973, a Master of Fine Arts from the State Institute of New York at Albany. He studied under Francis Cunningham and the realist artist Lennart Anderson, and absorbed the teaching philosophies of Edwin Dickinson . From 1973 to 1984, Hershberg was an instructor of painting and drawing at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore , Maryland . In 1984 he taught painting at the New York Academy of Art . Hershberg moved back to Israel with his family in 1984. In 1998, he founded the Jerusalem Studio School , a private art school in Jerusalem's Talpiot neighborhood that offers intensive training in drawing and painting within the figurative art tradition. It is considered to be the first school established in Israel to teach realist painting based on observation in the tradition of the Old Masters. Hershberg heads the school's “master class” program and is the Artistic Director of the JSS. Hershberg was awarded the Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art in 1991 and the Tel Aviv Museum prize for Israeli Art in 1998. His work has been purchased by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art , the Jewish Museum in New York City and the Imagawa Contemporary Art Collection in Osaka, Japan.²