Yosl Bergner

The painter Yosl Bergner was born in Vienna in 1920, arrived in Australia in 1937 and migrated to Israel in 1950. Melbourne scholar, Frank Klepner, provides a richly-detailed history of Bergner's Australian years and provides well-researched and previously unpublished insights into the artist's principal themes. Bergner first exhibited with Arthur Boyd and Noel Counihan in Melbourne in 1939 and from then he developed an increasingly social-realist approach to painting. Today, he is one of Israel's leading painters, but he continues to visit and exhibit works in Australia.