Arieh Allweil (b.1901, Galicia d. 1967, Safed. Israel)
1920 ? Immigrated to Palestine.
He became the first leader of the socially radical commune, Bittania, where Ernst was a member. It was during his year on Bittania that he decided to become a painter.
He wrote about his decision:
"I decided to become a painter at the time when I was living in a settlement of pioneers (Bittania) on a mountain in Galilee...the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan shine in the moonlight and the whole is like one of those Rembrandt paintings in a book of mine. In the morning the landscape lightens up the clods of earth from the ploughing are brown and in the furrows the young green is sprouting. From all the valleys mists are rising like shawls -- white, gray, blue and violet. Over the Golan the clouds have a touch of pink and orange all is laced with various blues. In those nights I saw my future as a painter...".
After designing Ernst's demonic gravestone Allweil returned to Europe to study art in Vienna until 1926.
1924 - He produced a set of lithographs depicting a disturbing series of nightmarish images from his Bittania experience. Like the design on the grave, these pictures are morbid and jarring.
1926 - Allweil returned to Palestine, there he quit the intense expressionist style and switched to simple natural landscape.
Allweil writes, "My real aim is to paint this land of ours from dawn to sunset."
