Birgit Ben-Eli

Birgit Ben-Eli is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A graduate of the Free University of Berlin and the University of Vienna, she received her M.A. in art history, archaeology and modern history from the Free University of Berlin. Her main area of expertise and research interest is Jewish art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Austria, Germany, and Hungary. Among her research interests she addresses the issues of the role and status of Jews in the arts, Jewish identity, the concept of home and exile, memory and place as well as Jewish identity and femininity.

Articles by this author

Broncia Koller-Pinell

Broncia Koller-Pinell was a successful artist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and a contemporary of Josef Hoffmann, Kolo Moser, and Gustav Klimpt in Vienna. As a Jew and a woman creating art in Christian male-dominated spaces, Koller-Pinell remained true to herself and created beautiful artwork in spite of the adversities she faced.

Tina Blau

Tina Blau was the only Jewish woman artist of her generation to be recognized by her peers. Blau made her artistic debut in 1867 and her paintings were included in the 1873 Viennese World Exhibition. In 1897 she co-founded the Wiener Frauenakademie, an art school for women, and taught there until 1915.

Austria: Jewish Women Artists

Most Jewish women artists from Austria have been forgotten due to the male domination of the Austrian art sphere and the Holocaust. However, many Jewish female artists in Austria created influential work and established their own system of education and their own organizations, leading to a flourishing female art world until 1938.

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Birgit Ben-Eli." (Viewed on December 4, 2024) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/ben-eli-birgit>.