Jacob Pins; Israeli woodcout artist
Hyfler/Rosner
By MEIR RONNEN
Jerusalem Post
As reported briefly earlier, the dean of Israeli woodcut
artists and noted collector of Japanese prints and
paintings, Jacob Pins, died in Jerusalem at the age of 88.
One of the last of the hundreds of yekkes (German Jews) who
dominated the arts, literature and medicine in Jerusalem
between 1935-65, Pins was born in Germany in 1917, and
arrived here on a student visa in 1936.
His massive collection of Japanese woodprints, paintings and
sculptures, destined for the Israel Museum and exhibited
there on several occasions, is extraordinary; and he wrote
the definitive book on hashira-e, Japanese woodblock pillar
prints, elongated designs that once hung on the slim wooden
pillars of 18th and 19th-century pleasure houses.
Unsurprisingly, the Japanese influence appeared in Pins's
own work; there was an overt reference to it in a number of
his works on paper, notably in his fine gestural brush
paintings of roosters (also the subject of his best-known
woodcuts). But the overwhelming influence on his work was
European. His posterish oils and their high coloration owed
more to Kandinsky and the great modernist movements of early
20th-century German painting than anything else, even though
the psychological effects of his exposure to Japanese formal
restraint remained evident.
Pins grew up in Hoxter; his parents got him to Palestine but
were unable to extricate themselves, and were deported and
killed in the Riga Ghetto in 1944.
Pins went first to a kibbutz. When it was disbanded in 1941
he had nothing to eat, but begged entry to a private art
school run by woodcut master and painter Jacob Steinhardt, a
teacher of woodcut at the New Bezalel School and later its
director (Bezalel was then not yet an academy).
Steinhardt, a member of the Brucke group and a pupil of
Lovis Corinth, had fought for Germany in World War I. Pins
studied with him until 1945 (and made drawings of Steinhardt
and his wife, Minni). Through Steinhardt, the influence of
Corinth filtered down to Pins as well.
By 1956, Pins had replaced Steinhardt as teacher of woodcut
and drawing at Bezalel, and the influence of the Japanese
print was evident in many of his minimalist woodcuts.
Exhibited at the Israel Museum was his outstanding series of
woodcut illustrations to Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von
Kleist.
It was back in 1945 that the penniless, half-starved Pins
scraped together the modest price of his first Japanese
woodcut print. Helped by an uncle, he bought some more in
London in 1951. Pins, never wealthy, continued to hunt for
woodblock prints, ink-wash paintings and sculptures
throughout his life, financing their purchase by selling off
lesser pieces as he set his sights higher and higher.
His large apartment, in an old house in Jerusalem's Rehov
Hahabashim, opposite the Ethiopian Church, soon took on the
aspect of a museum. In his collection are masterpieces by
Utamaro, Toyokuni, Hiroshige and Koryusai; and ink paintings
by Hakuin, one of the most noted Zen painters, among many
others.
Jacob Pins
Pioneering Israeli artist and collector snubbed by local
cliques because of his German background
Mordechai Beck
Saturday December 17, 2005
The Guardian
How fitting that Jacob Pins, Israel's pre-eminent woodcut
artist and art collector, should die in his home, a place he
had transformed into a vibrant centre of culture for more
than half a century. The house, on one of Jerusalem's most
distinguished old streets, served not just as his residence
and studio, but also as the storeroom for his priceless
collection of Japanese art, a meeting place for his
colleagues and students, and the place where he played host
to countless visitors curious to see the master's own prints
as well as items from his ever expanding collection.
Pins, who was 88, was born in Hoxter, north Germany, but
left in 1936 for Palestine. His father, a veterinarian,
tried to dissuade him from studying art, fearing the
financial consequences of such a choice.
In Palestine, Pins lived initially on a kibbutz but soon
realised that this would prevent him from pursuing an
artistic career. He moved to Jerusalem under the tutelage of
another German immigrant artist, Jacob Shteinhardt, with
whom he studied woodcut and linocut. Totally alone - his
parents had been murdered in the Riga ghetto - he was dogged
by poverty, living in a tiny room on "a diet of bread, water
and lentil soup". He later added eggs - of any variety - to
this sparse menu.
The purchase of his first oriental print in 1945 coincided
with his acquisition of the house on Ethiopia Street
(opposite the Ethiopian church), as though the one
necessitated the other. Throughout his life, he remained a
discriminating and knowledgeable collector, among the
country's first and most important.
Artistically, he was by then branching out on his own,
creating a unique blend of German expressionism and Japanese
wood block printing that gave his work a sense of discipline
and freedom, a fusion of the rough and the smooth that
typifies his best work.
In explaining his particular art form, Pins observed that
"in Europe, the light is multi-toned and subtle. Here, in
the Levant, it is bright and unforgiving. This is perfect
for woodcuts which are formed from sharp contrasts of light
and dark." A typical Pins print fuses simplified forms with
dramatic compositions, often underscored by his use of the
texture of the wood to bring out a sensual, and sometimes
erotic, dimension to his subjects.
Pins taught at Israel's premier art schools, most notably
Bezalel, between 1956 and 1977, raising a generation of
students who would develop his pioneering work in their own
way. He earned a reputation as a demanding teacher, placing
technical skills and discipline at the forefront of an
artist's education. Simultaneously, he established
Jerusalem's Artists' House, which became a magnet for the
city's artists to meet and exhibit. Even today, it is
central to the capital's artistic life.
Pins' own work has been exhibited and purchased by museums
and collectors around the world. A few years ago, 20 of his
works were bought by the British Museum's prints department.
His prints range from portraits and landscapes to animals
and narrative scenes. He produced two major books, Till
Olenshpiegel and Michael Kolhoz - the latter being only
recently republished with the full-size, original wood
blocks that he had designed some 50 years earlier.
In 1982, he received the Jerusalem Prize for Art. That he
did not receive the Israel Prize, is, according to Milcah
Chissick, "because he was a 'yekke' (a derogatory term used
by Israelis for German-Jewish immigrants), and was never
considered sufficiently avant-garde". This oversight
possibly reflects more the ingrained narrowness of the local
art establishment rather than any lack in Pins' prodigious
and innovatory output. His final disappointment with the
local art cliques was their refusal to accept his entire
corpus - including his oil paintings - as a gift. These will
now go to his home town of Hoxter, which is building a
museum for them in the name of Pins and his parents.
Married for many years to Elsa (the subject of a number of
his prints) he had no children, expressing his belief that
the life of the artist is one "to which you have to be
married".
· Jacob Pins, woodcut artist, born January 17 1917; died
December 4 2005