Emmanuel Mané-Katz

Emmanuel Mané-Katz , born Mane Leyzerovich Kats (1894–1962), was a Litvak painter of the School of Paris, born in Kremenchuk, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), best known for his depictions of the Jewish shtetl in Eastern Europe.

Biography Mané-Katz moved to Paris at the age of 19 to study art, although his father wanted him to be a rabbi. During the First World War he returned to Russia, at first working and exhibiting in Petrograd; following the October Revolution, he traveled back to Kremenchuk, where he taught art.

In 1931, Mané-Katz's painting The Wailing Wall was awarded a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair.

Mané-Katz made his first trip to Mandate Palestine in 1928, and thereafter visited the country annually. He said his actual home was Paris, but his spiritual home was Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

Mané-Katz Museum Mané-Katz left his paintings and extensive personal collection of Jewish ritual art to the city of Haifa, Israel. Four years before his death, the mayor of Haifa, Abba Hushi, provided him with a building on Mount Carmel to house his work, which became the Mané-Katz Museum. The exhibit includes Mané-Katz's oils, showing a progressive change in style over the years, a signed portrait of the artist by Picasso dated 1932 and a large collection of Jewish ritual objects.

In 1953, Mané-Katz donated eight of his paintings to the Glitzenstein Museum in Safed, whose artists quarter attracted leading Israeli artists in the 1950s and 1960s, and housed some of the country's most important galleries.