Rodan Yehuda (Rosenzweig István)
Oradea, 1916 - 1985, Tel Aviv
The Life
The horrific fate of the Jews of Transylvania reached Rodan, but he survived it by painting.
The Art
Yehuda Rodan is known and appreciated for his vivid landscapes and portraits of Jewish characters.
Finding his true calling
Yehuda was born in Oradea, Transilvania, in 1916.
He showed an interest in a medical career when he was 17 years old. He enrolled for medical courses at the University of Nancy in France, decided to abandon two years later and moved back to Romania to pursue his artistic calling under the guidance of Alfred Macalik. Four years later, in 1939, Yehuda moved to Budapest to start his apprenticeship under the wing of artist Adolf Fenyes
The misery unraveled by WWII caught up with him. Deported to a concentration camp, he was lucky to have survived by painting portraits of the Nazis. After the ordeal, he returned to Oradea where he worked until 1961, when he left for Israel. He continued to work in Safed, where he opened his own gallery with a permanent exhibition of his own art.
He participated in numerous solo exhibitions around the world (1963-1983 - Tel Aviv, 1967- Montreal, 1969 - New York and Toronto, 1970 - Haifa, 1971 - Los Angeles, 1974 - Antwerp and so on), his paintings being well known and appreciated. In 1967, he won the Nordau Prize for Art (founded by the World Organization of Hungarian Jews and by the Israeli Organization of Hungarian Immigrants).
