Israel’s Great Surrealist Artist and His Quest for Humans’ “Animal Dignity”

Born to a Romanian Jewish family, Edwin Salomon (1935–2014) pursued a career as a painter, gaining renown in his country as a young man. Yet in 1961 he, with his parents, seized an opportunity to leave for Israel, seeking better lives as Jews. Salomon had to struggle to resume his career in a new land, but he was able to break away from the strict realism mandated by the Communist regime under which he came of age. Jackie Frankel Yaakov considers his work on the tenth anniversary of his death.