Mordechai Avniel

Mordecai Dickstein (later Avniel) was born in 1900 in Parychy, in the Minsk. He studied fine arts in Yekaterinburg, Russia 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. Avniel was awarded the Herman Struck Prize (1952). He represented Israel at the 1958 Venice Biennale and the 1962 International Art Seminar at Fairleigh Dickinson University.