Nahum Gutman Museum

Nachum Gutman was born in Teleneşti, Bessarabia Governorate, then a part of the Russian Empire (now in the Republic of Moldova). He was the fourth child of Sim[c]ha Alter and Rivka Gutman. His father was a Hebrew writer and educator who wrote under the pen name S. Ben Zion. In 1903, the family moved to Odessa, and two years later, to Ottoman Palestine. In 1908, Gutman attended the Herzliya Gymnasium in what would later become Tel Aviv. In 1912, he studied at the Bezalel School in Jerusalem. In 1920–26, he studied art in Vienna, Berlin and Paris. Gutman was married to Dora, with whom he had a son. After Gutman’s death in 1980, Dora asked two Tel Aviv gallery owners, Meir Stern of Stern Gallery and Miriam Tawin of Shulamit Gallery, to appraise the value all of the works left in his estate. Between the years 1907-1914 the building which now houses the Gutman Museum was used as the offices of the periodical “Hapoel Hazair” (“The Young Worker”) and as a residence for its editor Joseph Aharonovitch and the writers Joseph Chaim Brenner and Dvora Baron. In 1912, Dvora Baron, the periodical’s literary editor, married Joseph Aharonovitch. The house became the literary center and meeting place for the group of Hebrew writers who marked the beginning of the new Hebrew culture, and became known as “The Writers’ House”.