Atar (Aptheker) Haim
ATAR (Aptheker) HAIM
ATAR (Aptheker ), HAIM (1902–1953), Israeli painter and pioneer. Born in Zlatopol, Russia, Atar joined the "Flowers of Zion" Zionist youth organization and in 1919 became a member of the Jewish defense group set up to combat the pogroms that swept the Ukraine. In 1922 he went to Palestine and was a founder-member of kibbutz En Harod. In 1933 and 1937–38 he studied art in Paris, where he met some of the Jewish leading artists of the day. Atar was a socially committed artist and felt it his task to encourage the kibbutz to aspire to beauty. In 1948 he founded Art Center at En Harod, which he directed. In his own work he was influenced by *Soutine and other Jewish painters of the *Paris School as well as East European Jewish art. His paintings have an atmosphere of melancholy. He painted portraits, still-life subjects, and flowers. He left nearly 300 paintings and about 1,000 drawings, including a series of the members of the *Palmaḥ drawn at the British internment camp at Rafa. Some of his works are on view at the Haim Atar Hall in the En Harod's Art Center.