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Gutman Nachum was born in 1898, Romania. Immigrated to Israel on 1905. Studies: Herzlia Gymnasium, Tel Aviv; 1913-1918 Bezalel, Jerusalem. 1926 Participated in famous Tower of David Exhibition. Prize: 1978 Israel Prize for Children''s Literature.
Wrote and illustrated books and well-known children''s books. Famous as "the artist of early Tel Aviv". 1976 Made a Worthy of Tel Aviv. Died 1980. Studied briefly at Bezalel in 1912 but was among the students who, even in the years preceding World War I, rebelled against its old-fashioned methods of instruction. In his paintings of the 1920s, Gutman forged a synthesis between his quest to convey the unique experience of building a new life in the Land of Israel and his adoption of the modernist trends in European art. This duality is reflected in Gutman''s exotic images of Arabs, painted in an eclectic style inspired by Henri Rousseau, Raoul Dufy, Renoir, and Picasso. He depicted shepherds and shepherdesses, farming girls washing naked in the orange groves, and Arab villagers - a hymn to the cultivators of the land, expressing the primeval link to the soil. Gutman''s series depicting brothels in Jaffa captures the instinctual and sensuous tang of the Middle East. Gutman was also a prolific illustrator, often drawing inspiration from ancient Asian motifs such as Assyrian reliefs and Egyptian wall paintings. From the 1930s onward, the characteristic massivity of his earlier figures gave way to a buoyant lightness. He was a master of the pictorial narrative, rendered by means of a tew summary lines and a decorative range of colors.
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Nahum Gutman 
