Alexander Bogen

Alexander Bogen (Tartu, 1916 - Tel Aviv, 2010) was a Polish-Israeli painter, draughtsman, set designer and illustrator, shaped by the Yiddish and Polish culture of Vilnius. His career, marked by war and exile, makes him a notable figure of twentieth-century Jewish art and of art education in the emerging state of Israel.

He studied painting and sculpture at the Stefan Batory academy, affiliated with Vilnius University, until World War II interrupted his training. He joined the partisans and became commander of a Jewish unit in the Narocz forests, where he buried many of his drawings near the lake. After returning to the ghetto in 1943 he helped rescue members of the United Partisan Organization. After the war he completed his degree, taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź and exhibited in Poland, with a large retrospective at the Łódź museum in 1950.

In 1951 he emigrated to Israel with his wife and settled in Tel Aviv. There he developed art programmes at a city high school, which he led for 22 years, and taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He continued painting and drawing until his death. His wartime drawings, made with improvised materials, document partisan life and the Jewish population under occupation; his murals and monuments stand in museums and memorial sites in Tel Aviv.

His legacy endures in exhibitions devoted to his resistance drawings, in the memorial plaque placed on his Tel Aviv home, and in his role as an educator of Israeli art.