Mordechai Avniel Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, Engraver, Elfenbeinschnitzer, b. 1900 - d. 1989

Mordechai Avniel (1900–1989), variant name Mordecai Avniel, was an Israeli painter, sculptor and lawyer.

Mordecai Dickstein (later Avniel) was born in 1900 in Parychy, in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus). He studied fine arts in Yekaterinburg, Russia (1913–19) and at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem (1923). Avniel immigrated to Palestine in 1921 where he first worked as a pioneer in citrus plantations near Petah Tikva. In 1923, at the urging of Boris Schatz, he went to Jerusalem to further his art studies at Bezalel. He later taught painting and sculpture at the school, and served a term as director of the Small Sculpture Section of the Sculpture Department (1924–28). From 1935 on, Avniel lived in Haifa. Avniel was also a lawyer and a founding partner of the Haifa firm Avniel, Salomon & Company.