Kenispel - Aman Haifa a prophet and not in his city • Shlomo Yuval

Gershon Knispel - a journey through the chapters of his life Part a'

Today I begin a journey to uplift the memory of a Haifa artist who did not receive the respect he deserved, and fully realized the sad saying that "there is no prophet in his city". Passers-by on the streets of Haifa and Ganiya come across his sculptures and bas-reliefs and doubtless know that they belong to the man whose story is told here in the Life Chapters series.

Please see some of his works and answer: Did you know who created them?

Let's start from Genesis

Knispel was born in Cologne, Germany in 1932, immigrated to Israel with his parents in 1935 following the rise of Nazism and the intensification of the persecution of the Jews. The boy was "educated" in public schools in Haifa and as a new immigrant "yaka", he was not accepted socially and suffered a lot of bullying due to his German origin.

He found an open door in the Palestinian children's homes of nearby neighborhoods in the lower city, including Wadi Salib, and learned to like Arabs. For an unknown reason, perhaps adjustment difficulties combined with economic hardship, Gershon was sent for several years to Kibbutz Sherid, the Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, and was nurtured there by the Amana family. The kibbutz was an ideological incubator for followers of Soviet socialism. To understand the brainwashing to which he was exposed The boy, I chose to display an obituary in memory of Stalin from 1953. The selection of words chosen by a Zionist party, MPM, to describe a revered leader is fascinating. This is what members of a Zionist party - MPM thought.

The divided soul of the poet

The great mouthpiece of the leader's adoration was the charismatic poet Alexander Penn, whose soul was divided and shaken between the love of the Russian homeland in the communist style and the return of Zion to the homeland.

In fiery poetry and sharp speeches, Penn preached a violent social struggle for the realization of socialism in the style of Stalin.

It seems that the experience of the years of the treaty and the warm embrace he received from the children of Wadi Salib and Nisnas and the Bedouin neighbors he met in the fields near the kibbutz, shaped his world view sympathetic to minorities and the oppressed, to trampled people wherever they may be, and stuck with him for the rest of his life. In the rest, Knispel began to paint and was encouraged by the results.

The boy returned to his parents' home, completed his matriculation and enrolled in drawing classes in Jerusalem in preparation for starting his studies at the "New Bezalel" after his military service, where he met a charismatic teacher - the painter Mordechai Ardon who is responsible for shaping his artistic path.

The movements of time

Erdon remained faithful throughout his life to the values ​​he had acquired since childhood, in the shtetl in Poland, and later at the Bauhaus school and in socialist circles in Europe. In Germany he studied and taught and was an artistic-political activist in German Marxist circles. In 1926 he exhibited in Berlin with the Marxist "November Group". With the rise of Nazism, he rarely painted because he believed that the artist must 'join the revolutionary movements of the time'. Ardon aimed at the view of the laboring man from the window of the artist's studio and not at the scenery and the romance of Shibat Zion.

Ardon students were exposed in "The New Bezalel" to a realistic painting style that would reflect the human condition in society. The worker, the immigrant, the persecuted. This approach suited Knispel like a glove. In the artistic world of the Land of Israel during the years of the establishment of the state, social realism was in an artistic minority position. Most of the painters were united in 1948 as part of "New Horizons" under the initiative of Zaretsky, Shreichman, Stimatsky. This association tended to abstract painting, admiring the light and the landscape, neutral and apolitical and sometimes poetic according to the best tradition that developed in Europe, with the exception of Soviet Russia.

Artists loyal to their path, with a political-critical worldview such as Knispel and Bazem, suffered confiscation by friends and curators who follow competing artistic schools. Most of them were not displayed in museums due to boycotts that lasted for a generation.

"to remember and not to forget"

Knispel graduated from Bezalel in 1954 and in the same year also joined the Communist Party; Particularly interesting is the dissertation he submitted in preparation for receiving his graduation certificate. It was a work of lithographs of cartoon poets' poems, which maintain a dialogue with a group of protest poems, by means of drawing and calligraphy (a letter designed by the student), in the "Shiri Dor" booklet.

Knisfel chose to highlight one line from Shalonsky's poem, the "Vow" poem that became a guiding principle in his works on the subject of the Holocaust, "I made a vow: to remember everything, to remember and not to forget."

During his creative years, Knispel found himself illustrating poems by poets who made him famous in the world. Particularly well known is the work of illustrations for the poem "The Children's Crusade" by the German Bertold Brecht, which was exhibited at the Hecht Museum in Haifa.

"the counter"

As a member of the Communist Party, Knispel was recruited to illustrate Alexander Penn's book of poems "For the Counter" and years later his book "Along the Way". It is well known that the "against" poet was created in 1935 and "updated" in the 50s in accordance with the strengthening of the tendency towards pure communism on the part of Penn.

"... and with no other way out, the step wing
And beat them on the gallows with a red cannon.
cut off the hand
that your throat chokes,
And they fought until
The opposite!..."

This poem was recited at national ceremonies such as the 1th of Adar and at class events such as the May XNUMXst celebrations. The violent content greatly influenced the attitudes of young people during the struggle to end the mandate and the establishment of the State of Israel, including Knispel.

The biggest move

At the end of his studies, Knispel was offered a teaching position in Bezalel, but he turned it down and preferred to return to Haifa.
And this is how he explained his decision:
"When I finished my studies at Bezalel, they offered me to stay there as a lecturer, but ideologically I told myself that I could contribute more if I returned to Haifa. I chose to teach at the crossing in Kfar Ata and Nesher, where the children of the laborers who worked in Nesher studied."

Knispel taught and began to create works that associated him with the stream of social realism. Haifa is full of subjects for painting, the social and economic difficulties in the first years of the state as well as the situation of the Palestinians who remained in its territory. As Knispel said: "Here was the largest transit, the gate of aliyah. Here was the largest concentration of heavy industries. Here were many hardworking residents, here as well as in Nasher and Kiryat, people who were exposed to terrible air pollution. The number of lung patients was very high, but That there was no awareness of the issue at the time."

draw the street

Inspired by Ardon, Knispel went to the streets, to the slums and painted in his realistic style paintings of a distinctly social nature. Knispel often painted on large-sized canvases and in his repertoire several monumental street scenes that are considered seminal works in the chronology of Israeli social realism, among them "Labor Office", "Signing the Peace Petition" and "Street at Sunset Twilight". The art historian Gideon Ofrat analyzed the works and we quote some of his words.

Sunset twilight

In 1954, in a general exhibition at Beit Dizengoff (Tel Aviv Museum), Knispel presented his huge painting in oil colors on canvas, "A street in the twilight of sunset". This is a melancholic realistic street scene, on the right we see a boy in a hat, selling an Arab newspaper to the bourgeois who pays him. On the left side, sits an elderly Mizrahi man with a long beard, probably a beggar, and on his lap lies his little grandson, next to him sits his dog. In the middle, with his back to us, facing the kiosk stand, stood a guy, looking like a new immigrant. All the figures are symbols of members of oppressed classes, and the painter depicts them realistically in their pain and depression.

The peace petition

Regarding the work 'Signing the Peace Petition', which is a monumental work, Knispel says that he and his friend Shimon Zabar were in the market in Acre at the time of the signing of the peace petition organized by members of neighboring kibbutzim and even signed it.

almost touching

Knispel told about the work LeZiv Berman, curator and art researcher, in September 2017: "The figures gathered in the market of Acre at the initiative of members of Kibbutz Ein Hamfaretz and Kfar Masarik. The two kibbutzim initiated the peace petition in 1953. They set up a high table in the center of the market and began to sign a joint petition, Arab and Jewish, for peace. It was a record that Shimon Zabar had prepared. I was present at the time that it happened in the market. Of course I signed... What was important to me was to discover the characteristics of the two peoples with their problematic complexity, and put it on the canvas based on Shimon's drawing. Interpret Shimon's drawing in oil. Then I discover through the characters the diversity of the population The Jewish - part kibbutznik part urban, and the diversity of the Arab population - part peasants part urban. This is what stood before my eyes - to give it the authentic expression. There is a closeness between the right hand of the Arab woman and the Jewish woman, they almost touch."

Easier than making peace

Every detail in the painting is important to Knispel and as he told Ziv Berman, there is a message in it:
"On the side of the composition - a construction worker carrying bricks on his back and going up the stairs. As if saying to himself - it's easier to carry the bricks up the stairs than to make peace. Like Sisyphus who took the stone to the top of the mountain, and from the top of the mountain it always rolled back."

the missing dog

And hence the third most famous painting of all: "The Labor Office". The painting is currently on permanent display at the Haifa Museum of Art and was first shown there in 1957, depicting unemployed people waiting in front of a locked labor office in the city of Haifa and soldiers standing in front of the doors. It presents a sad, pessimistic reality of helplessness and hopelessness. This image lacks the production found in an earlier version painted by the artist. The dog... and she is presented for your judgment.

The labor office across the street

Knispel recounted the circumstances of its formation: "I received from the city officer of Haifa the upper floor of the building where it was located, so that I could teach soldiers with a talent for painting there. Across from it was located the central labor bureau, in the place where Solel Bona's building was later erected. It was a classic building Stone. People stood outside and waited. Each time I took one of the people standing there, and paid him a daily wage so that I and the soldiers who studied with me would draw them. I created many sketches, and that's how I came up with the idea for the big painting of the 'Labor Office.'

The painting "Labor Office" managed to reflect an atmosphere, feelings, social and personal situation that was not widely expressed in Israeli art, and later became the representative work of the entire artistic genre in Israel - the protest art of social realism that grew in Haifa. An artistic movement that dealt with the description of the Israeli reality after the establishment of the state, about the social and political problems of that period - a difficult economic situation and the problematic absorption of immigrants from the eastern denominations.

Ardon was behind me

The static poses of the people sitting and standing in the painting are nothing but the calm before the storm. The comparison of the dog in the current painting to the dog sitting in the "street at dusk" [1953-4] a domesticated dog, sitting, full body - will emphasize the symbolism of the animal in the "Labor Office" version III.
In 1978, Gershon Knispel told about the attitude of the authorities to the work: "When we sent an exhibition to Moscow in 1956 that included the painting "The Labor Office" we had the support of the progressive society in Israel, which required the continuation of contacts with Russia. We did not stand alone. When Father Khushi ordered to take down My picture from the wall ("Labor Bureau"), on the grounds that it constitutes communist propaganda, that the painting is trending and is intended to show the Jews that there is no work here and that they have no reason to immigrate to Israel, the painter Mordechai Ardon stood behind me, who required the presentation of the picture.

Gray work for a great idea

"We were really different then. We thought in different terms. We saw ourselves as a kind of collective, not great painters-artists, but people who do gray work for a great idea, each according to his strength. We came with a large load from the left, most of us, except for Moshe Gat, came from petty-bourgeois houses, and maybe we had feelings of guilt. We would go out to the crossings and to the Arab villages to protest the seclusion in the ivory tower, to see and feel."

Sad glory

In the end, the painting "disappeared" and was never exhibited in the Soviet Union. Fortunately for Knispel, he drew 2 versions from the start and one left to complete. Since then several more versions have been created and we all benefited.
Anyone interested can see this painting in its sad glory at the Haifa Museum.

Knispel went to the Soviet Union for a group exhibition of artists from the Land of Israel, and then he suddenly got the offer to do a huge work in Brazil and chapter 2 began, a fascinating and long chapter in the artist's life.
We will add and tell about this soon.
[end of chapter 1].