Zeev Yaskil

Zeev Yaskil was born in Leipzig in 1929 into a family in which artistic practice was an integral part of everyday life. His father, Abraham Jaskiel or Avraham Yaskiel as he is also referred to (1894–1987), was an established painter in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, working primarily with landscapes, city views and still lifes. In 1933, with the rise of National Socialism, the family was forced to leave Germany.¹ Zeev emigrated with his mother to Palestine as a small child; his father had already settled there earlier. Leipzig remained a place of origin, but no longer a place of return – hence Zeev has been included in the archive to also acknowledge the fate of those students for whom exile was the only option, and later returned to study at HFBK.

The family eventually settled near Haifa, where artistic work continued across generations. Zeev’s early education was shaped by this environment and by workshop-based instruction initiated by his father, the painter Abraham Jaskiel in the 1950s. Together with fellow artists, including Zvi Meirowitz and Mordechai Kafri, he conducted practical workshops for young, emerging artists, focusing on painting, composition and sculptural techniques.² In 1953, Zeev Yaskil received a scholarship from the Labour Board of Haifa to study at Neve Shaanan Art College in Haifa.³ Supported by UNESCO, Yaskil travelled through Europe and visited major museums, encountering artistic traditions that had been abruptly cut off from his family only a generation earlier. The funding was most likely connected to UNESCO’s Fundamental Education Program, although no direct documentary confirmation of the specific program could be identified.⁴ In 1959, Zeev Yaskil returned to Germany to study applied painting and sgraffito at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK). He was among the few Israeli students at the time to receive support from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service, short DAAD).

At HFBK, Yaskil studied under Professor Theo Ortner and, between 1961 and 1962, also worked under Eduardo Paolozzi, who was a guest professor of sculpture at the institution.⁵ In a report addressed to the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) dated December 18, 1961, Paolozzi describes Yaskil as a student who approached his creative work with “energy and industry,” emphasizing both his mechanical and inventive skills. More significantly, Paolozzi highlights Yaskil’s exceptional potential as a craftsman, expressing his conviction that with further research and study, Yaskil would be capable of producing work of very high quality.⁶ His studies in Hamburg marked a decisive moment in his artistic education: a conscious return to Germany through institutional and artistic frameworks, rather than through biography alone. Yaskil, however, did not stay in Germany; after completing his studies, he returned to Israel for good.

Yaskil worked primarily as a graphic artist, focusing on drawing, engraving, etching and woodcut. His practice is characterized by technical precision and long, concentrated working processes.⁷ Urban and architectural motifs recur throughout his work, with Jerusalem appearing repeatedly as a central subject. Rather than depicting the city as fragmented or territorially divided, Yaskil consistently represents Jerusalem as a shared spatial construct. In his graphic works, religious architecture is presented without hierarchy: Islamic, Christian and Jewish sites coexist within the same pictorial field, rendered with equal formal attention. City walls, gates and sacred buildings are frequently merged or placed side by side, dissolving conventional separations between religious and cultural domains. This approach becomes particularly clear in works such as Clocks (year unknown, etching, 35 x 25 cm) where time itself functions as a symbolic device. Multiple clocks display different hours, referring to the distinct temporal systems of the Jewish, Islamic and Christian calendars. Sun- and moon-based time cycles appear simultaneously, suggesting coexistence rather than opposition through a shared cosmological reference.⁸

Throughout his career, Yaskil participated in numerous group exhibitions in Israel. Among these were the “General Exhibition” at the Tel Aviv Museum and an exhibition at Dizengoff House in Tel Aviv in the spring of 1959. Publicly traceable records indicate that his latest documented exhibition participation took place in the summer of 2007 at Castra Gallery in Haifa, where his works were shown alongside those of other artists.⁹ Apart his own artistic practice, Yaskil worked as a restorer and educator. From 1975  onwards, he taught at the art academy founded by his father in Haifa; from 1978 he worked as a restorer at the Museum of Ancient Art in Haifa. He lived and worked in Kiryat Bialik, near Haifa, and remained closely connected to the artistic and educational institutions of the region.

The intertwined artistic paths of the Jaskil family were brought together in 1997 in Leipzig in the exhibition Abschied und Wiederkehr, organised by the Ephraim Carlebach Stiftung. Presenting works by Abraham, Zeev, and his brother Amos, the exhibition marked a symbolic moment of return to the city of their origin and to a history from which they had once been forced to depart. Within this familial constellation, Zeev Yaskil’s studies at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg occupy a particular position: not as a conclusion, but as a formative passage between exile, education and artistic continuity.