Itzhak Danziger (1916-1977)
The Shepherd King, 1964-1966
Brass
Courtesy of the Leonid and Tatiana Nevzlin Collection
Must Know
An Israeli sculptor Itzhak Danziger was a pioneering artist of the Canaanite movement and later joined the group “Ofakim Hadashim” (New Horizons). The Shepherd King, in its abstract forms, symbolizes David, the shepherd-king of Israel. The head-disk was intended to face east and catch the sun rising over Jerusalem. The abstracted ram’s horns recall the rituals connected with the blowing of the shofar.
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Itzhak Danziger (1916-1977) was born in Berlin and came to Palestine as a boy in 1923. Danziger played an important role in the cultural-political movement known as The Canaanites, which advocated for cutting off relations with the diaspora and replacing Jewish religious traditions with a new hebrew identity based on ancient Middle Eastern culture. Danziger’s affinity for nature and place, developed while he was on reconnaissance missions in the Negev desert, and led him to create numerous sculptures and drawings of animals. In 1956 Danziger joined New Horizons, introducing works which were current and local at the same time, adopting the myth of the indigenous native man which was intertwined with contemporaneous forms and materiality. he was inspired by such events as the sheep-shearing festival, variations on altars and sacrificial offerings, local rituals and folklore. Danziger believed that the artist must adhere to the natural world. he focused on the local terrain and the rituals typical of the place, which he explored tirelessly, and was particularly interested in the link between natural landscapes and the sites or places marked by tombs or monuments, erected as “memorials.” Danziger drew on the land’s ancient heritage, and was profoundly attuned to the structures, trees, and ritual objects of its local landscape.
The piece was originally planned to be a thirty-meter high tent pole/totem topped by a ram’s head for a sheep shearing festivity near Ein Harod. Danziger was fascinated by agricultural rituals. Afterwards he designed this smaller version made of brass cylinders of three parts; the staff of the shepherd, the disc/eye of the shepherd or sheep, and the bent cylander reminding us of the shofar or the head of a ram.
This work recalls the idyllic King David who started out as a shepherd, and ruled over Jerusalem. It is a work that connects to the land of Israel, to ritual objects and to our ancient heritage.
