The painter Yosl Bergner was born in Vienna in 1920, arrived in Australia in 1937, and migrated to Israel in 1950.
Melbourne scholar Frank Klepner provides a richly-detailed history of Bergner's Australian years and provides well-researched and previously unpublished insights into the artist's principal themes.
Bergner first exhibited with Arthur Boyd and Noel Counihan in Melbourne in 1939 and from then he developed an increasingly social-realist approach to painting.
One of Israel's leading painters, he continued to visit and exhibit works in Australia prior to his death in 2017.
The Jewish Museum of Australia is proud to house his 2008 work The Red Heifer in our collection.
Pictured here with Art & Architecture of the Synagogue.