Kopel Gurwin

Kopel Gurwin (קופל גורבין) (1923–1990) was an Israeli wall hanging artist, painter and graphic artist.

Kopel (Kopke') Gurwin (Gurwitz) was born and raised in Vilna, the capital of Lithuania.

His father Mordechai worked as a shoemaker and his mother Malka as a housekeeper.

Kopel and his siblings, Moshe (Meshke') who was two and a half years his elder, and Chava (Chavale’) who was four years younger, spoke Yiddish at home, but simultaneously studied Hebrew at their school which was part of the Tarbut educational network.

Kopel was active in the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement.

Also that year Kopel won first prize for a poster to mark the 25th Zionist Congress.

In the 1930s, as a teenager, Kopel helped his parents with the home finances by working in a suit workshop, there he first encountered the art of sewing.

With the outbreak of the Second World War and the German invasion of Vilna, the Jews were imprisoned in camps and ghettos.

Kopel and his brother Moshe were separated from their parents and were put to work in coal mines and peat.

Kopel's parents were taken to the Stutthof concentration camp where they died of typhus within a month of each other.

Kopel's 12-year-old sister Chava was turned over to the Germans by a Polish family and murdered.

The brothers were arrested by the Germans, but were saved thanks to the connections of Nina Gerstein, Kopel's drama teacher.

They hid in an attic until they were discovered, fled and moved to Riga, where they were caught and sent to the Stutthof concentration camp where they were imprisoned until the end of the war.

They were put to work maintaining and cleaning trains and took part in one of the death marches.

In July 1946, Kopel and Moshe sailed to Helsingborg, Sweden, as part of operation "Folke Bernadotte", in which Sweden took in ill survivors for rehabilitation.

Once he recovered, Kopel worked in a publishing house and later was appointed director of the local branch of the Halutz movement.

This poster appeared on the cover of Jewish Art and Civilization, edited by Geoffrey Wigoder, as well as the record Voices of 20 Years, 1948-1968, edited by Yossi Godard.

In 1950 Kopel and Moshe made aliyah to Israel.

Kopel worked as a survey for the Survey of Israel Company.

In 1951, he enlisted to the Communication Corps and served as a military draftsman.

There he won first prize for the design of the front cover of the Communication Corps bulletin.

With his discharge from the army at 29 he started studying drawing and graphics at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.

Among his teachers were Isidor Ascheim, Shlomo Vitkin, Yossi Stern and Jacob Steinhardt.

At the end of his first year of study, Kopel won the Reuben and Sarah Lif Excellence Award in written studies.

During his studies he also won additional prizes: In 1956 he won first prize from the Lethem Foundation in California for poster design.

Later the same year, Kopel won the Herman Shtruk prize for his drawing on the theme of Jerusalem.

In 1957 he won an additional first prize from the Lethem Foundation and second place from the printing company Ortzel for a drawing for a Jewish New Year greeting card.

In 1958 he won first prize in a competition to design a poster for Tel Aviv's jubilee.

Two years later he won three other awards: First and third prize for designing a poster for Israel Independence Day, celebrating 12 years of the State of Israel.

In 1964 he entered the Independence Day poster competition on the theme of aliyah and won first and second prize.

Four years later he again entered the competition on the theme of 20 years of Israel's independence and won first prize.

The poster was styled like a Holy Ark curtain with two lions and a menorah at its centre.

At the 1964 Levant Fair exhibition he used felt stuck onto wooden panels for the first time.

The first felt wall hanging that Kopel produced was intended for the American Cultural Centre in Jerusalem and its theme was the United States Declaration of Independence.

The wall hanging, which measured 2.85 X 1.85 meters, was stuck on a wooden panel.

Kopel ordered rolls of felt from France and began work on wall hangings based on bible stories.

In April 1971 he won first prize in the Independence Day poster competition for the fourth time.

With the completion of his studies at Bezalel Kopel moved to Tel Aviv and was hired by Shmuel Grundman's graphics and design studio.

Grundman took him to Europe with him to design and supervise the construction of Israeli exhibition pavilions.

During his time at Grundman's he discovered the fibrous felt from which he produced most of his wall hangings.