Chana Orloff

Chana Orloff was born the eighth of nine children in a village called Kamenka, also known by the name of Tsaraconstantinovka,[1] Russian Empire (now Ukraine).

[2] After five years in Palestine, she was offered a teaching position in sewing and dressmaking at Hovevei Zion School for Girls in Jaffa.

In February 1945, Kars committed suicide in Geneva,[4] after which Orloff returned to Paris, to find that her house had been ransacked and the sculptures in her studio destroyed.

[5] In Paris, Orloff became friendly with other young Jewish artists, among them Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Amedeo Modigliani, Jules Pascin, Chaïm Soutine, and Ossip Zadkine.

After her return to Paris in 1950, Orloff received support and friendship from the Ukrainian-born artist Norman Carton to further grow her Parisian career using photography.

In addition to monuments, Orloff sculpted portraits of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and future Prime Minister Levi Eshkol; the architects Pierre Chareau, and Auguste Perret; painters Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, and Per Krohg; and the poets Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and Pierre Mac Orlan.