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Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, founded in Jerusalem in 1906 by Boris Schatz, is the oldest art school in Israel and the workshop where a self-conscious Hebrew visual language was first imagined. Named for Bezalel ben Uri, the biblical artisan of the Tabernacle (Exodus 31), it fused European academic art, Yemenite craft, and Jugendstil into the "Bezalel style". This lesson covers Schatz's founding vision, the four campuses, key alumni, and Bezalel's outsize influence on Israeli design and graphic identity.
Cultural note, Almost every famous Israeli logo, museum poster, and book cover has a Bezalel graduate behind it. The "Bezalel style" of 1906-1929 (Yemenite filigree + Jugendstil + biblical motifs) is now considered kitsch by many, but the Academy's modernist reset under Mordecai Ardon in the 1940s-50s placed Israel inside the Bauhaus-Paris-New York visual conversation. Saying "I went to Bezalel" in Israel carries the same weight as "I went to Cooper Union" or "the Royal College of Art".
Founding & Boris Schatz
The Bezalel Style 1906-1929
Modernist Reset & Today
Departments & Campuses
Notable Alumni
A Bezalel Application Conversation
A short dialogue between a prospective student and a Bezalel admissions counselor at the open-day on Mount Scopus.