Curator – Dr. Alek D. Epstein
January 1 – February 5, 2026
House on the Shore (Under the Blue Sky), oil on canvas, 41x38 cm
House and Boat under the Shade of Trees, oil on canvas, 42x39 cm
Locked Past, oil on canvas, 24x21 cm
Discarded Bells near an Old House, oil on canvas, 24x21 cm
House with a Huge Bell, oil on canvas, 24x21 cm
Old House with a Balcony, oil on canvas, 33х29 cm
The Bells of History: Yaakov Nowogroder’s Nostalgic Surrealism
Dr. Alek D. Epstein
Artistic Director and Curator, the Moshe Castel Museum of Jewish Israeli Art in Ma’ale Adumim
Yaakov Nowogroder, soon to turn ninety, is one of the most remarkable and uniquely gifted Israeli artists. His color palette is relatively quiet, the subjects of his paintings are very far from any current affairs in Israel and the world, and yet, once you see them – it is almost impossible to forget them. The exhibition at The Moshe Castel Museum of Jewish Israeli Art includes only six paintings, but they certainly constitute a representative selection of his works and allow for an in-depth look at the artist’s unique style.
Yaakov Nowogroder was born in 1936 in the small Polish town of Ostrów Mazowiecka, northeast of Warsaw. The town had been part of the Łomża Province of the Russian Empire until 1917. Most of its Jewish inhabitants perished in the Holocaust; some of them were deported to the Warsaw and Łomża ghettoes, and later to the Treblinka death camp. Under the Nazi occupation, the town’s population was halved. The Nowogroder family did survive, though: After the partition of Poland following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, they had managed to flee eastward, into the Soviet Union. At first, they settled in Belarus; after the Nazi invasion of the USSR, they moved further inland, to the Mari Republic. The future artist’s father was conscripted into the Red Army, and served on the frontlines throughout the war, while his son spent about a year in the village of Kubasovo, together with his mother and sister, and later moved to Sanchursk (now in Kirov Oblast).
In 1946, the family returned to Poland, but they were unable to regain their former home, and were resettled in a completely different place, the city of Dzierżoniów (previously known as Reichenbach) near Wrocław in Lower Silesia. Later, Yaakov Nowogroder studied for two years in Wrocław.
In 1957, the Polish authorities permitted the Jews willing to immigrate to the State of Israel to do so, and the Nowogroders were among the first to seize this opportunity. Yaakov, who had just turned twenty, arrived in Israel together with his father, mother, and sister. About a year later, he was conscripted, and served in the Israeli military for three years, from 1958 to 1961. And then his wanderings began: First, he moved to Beersheba, and later lived in Haifa. In the late 1970s, he finally settled down in Petah-Tikva, where he has lived ever since with his wife Pnina.
Looking at his paintings, one can hardly believe that he became a professional artist only in his forties, though he had had a passion for art ever since his childhood. Until the age of forty-four, he worked at a public office, and painted only in his spare time.
Yaakov Nowogroder did not really have a teacher, so his talent evolved and flourished naturally. The style he has developed could be described as “nostalgic surrealism,” and his works are instantly recognizable at any exhibition. “I don’t think that anyone can actually teach you to be a good artist,” says Nowogroder, “If you try to make your talent fit some rigid system or tradition, you will only ruin it; but, if there is no talent there in the first place, you will just get nowhere, no matter what.”
Obviously, Yaakov Nowogroder is only one of those self-taught artists who have developed their talent on their own. In fact, he appears to be one of the most gifted self-taught artists to have emerged in Israel since the foundation of the state – just like Henri Rousseau in French art, whose works are now displayed in the world’s most prestigious museums. Nowogroder’s talent is not limited to his perfectly mastered technique; rather, it also has to do with the bright and bountiful world he creates on the canvas, so rich and unique. Instead of simply capturing reality, he conceives of a completely different universe, where the remnants of the past serve to nurture a new life.
Thanks to his success among art collectors, Yaakov Nowogroder was able to quit his job in 1980 and dedicate himself exclusively to painting. He bitterly admits that, only a while ago, even people of modest standing wished to buy paintings, whereas today everyone is happy with posters. He laments society’s growing indifference to art and culture in general. The artist confesses: “I honestly don’t know if I would have had the courage to quit my job now, to make a living from my painting.”
Yaakov Nowogroder shows the utmost respect to the future owners of his works: He meticulously adds a finishing touch to the edges of the canvas, and then carefully selects the frame. A portfolio featuring eight prints of his paintings, published in 750 copies, with every sheet numbered and signed by the artist, gave a considerable boost to his artistic career. Additionally, an album of his works was published in 1981, and finally, in the late 1990s, another two booklets, including several dozens of his paintings, saw the light of day. His exhibitions have taken place in museums and galleries all over Israel, as well as in Montreal, Dusseldorf, and Brussels. For years, Yaakov Nowogroder had worked with the most renowned art galleries in Tel Aviv, owned by Eliezer Rosenfeld and Bruno Abramovich. Unfortunately, both men passed away, and their heirs have not been able to keep up the pace set by their predecessors. Additionally, a number of his exhibitions were held at the “13.5” gallery in Jaffa, owned by Abraham Eisenburg and Erik Van-Ezel. In 1999, they sold the building to new investors, yet the latter did not care much for the arts. Sometimes, his paintings would be sold off so fast that the exhibition had to close down ahead of schedule.
In the words of the well-known Israeli writer and journalist David Giladi (1908–2009), who authored a preface to an album of the artist’s selected works (published in 1981), in Yaakov Nowogroder’s paintings there exists a wondrous, enchanted, almost magical world, all aglow with soft colors and shades, full of vivid images of nature, with green branches stretching over the ground. His style evinces a neo-Romantic influence, with its telltale warm colors phasing into shades of velvet beige and ochre grey. The interplay of color draws the viewer’s attention to the center of the canvas, where treetops rustle in the wind, with their tender leaves painted in delicate, airy brushstrokes, so sincere and heartfelt, as though the artist were seeking to tell a story from the bottom of his heart.
As David Gilady aptly remarked, “It is a known rule of literature as of art that each work contains autobiographical elements. This rule holds good for the work of Nowogroder, whose external, legendary motifs, are the attractive wrapping for the burden of harsh experiences concealed inside. Nowogroder in his realism gives us an accurate rendering, and also the import of his message could give rise to the impression that here we have to do with realism for its own sake. But the fact is that under the veneer of realism there lies revealed a fantasy world of chaos, the world of another planet from which the artist came, and in which everything had collapsed, become decrepit, turned into junk. Everything that men had created over the course of centuries had met its destruction.”
Yaakov Novogruder’s works can also be given another interpretation: his works seem to recreate visions of a beautiful and charming period that never actually was (these are quite surreal paintings) – and yet, the viewer feels as if he belongs and is connected to it. These works cause the sense of time to be lost in the colorful vortex of the artist’s infinite imagination, to which he also invites us, the viewers... This invitation is an opportunity; we cannot fail to take advantage of it.
