Chana Orloff

Chana Orloff (; 25 June 1888 – 16 December 1968) was a Ukrainian-born French and Israeli Art deco and figurative art sculptor.

Biography

Chana Orloff was born on June 25, 1888, the eighth of nine children in Aleksandrovsk . Her elder brothers were born in the Jewish agricultural colony Trudolyubovka (Aleksandrovsk uyezd) in southeastern Ukraine (then Russian Empire). , on the coast of the Sea of Azov, part of the Black Sea. As a teenager she took classes in sewing and dressmaking in Mariupol to ensure she could earn a living and avoid an arranged marriage. Orloff took class at the Gymnasia Herzliya, where Nishri was a teacher, and joined the Hapoel Hatzair workers movement and Hapoel Rishon LeZion sports club. after which Orloff returned to Paris, to find that her house had been ransacked and the sculptures in her studio destroyed.

Art career

In Paris, Orloff became friendly with other young Jewish artists, among them Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Amedeo Modigliani, Jules Pascin, Chaïm Soutine, and Ossip Zadkine. In 1913, she exhibited in the Salon d'Automne. After the establishment of the State of Israel, Orloff began spending an increasing amount of time there. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art held an exhibition of 37 of her sculptures in 1949. She remained in Israel for about a year in order to complete a sculpture of David Ben-Gurion, The Hero Monument to the defenders of Ein Gev and The Motherhood Monument in memory of Chana Tuchman Alderstein who died during the 1947–1949 Palestine war. After her return to Paris in 1950, Orloff received support and friendship from the Ukrainian-born artist Norman Carton to further grow her Parisian career using photography. She became a mentor to him. In addition to monuments, Orloff sculpted portraits of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and future Prime Minister Levi Eshkol; the architects Pierre Chareau, and Auguste Perret; painters Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, and Per Krohg; and the poets Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and Pierre Mac Orlan. .

Orloff died in Israel on 16 December 1968.