At the age of 14 he joined the Mahane Avoda youth movement and began to study art with Paul Henich.

In 1938, he was one of the founders of Kibbutz Beit HaArava, located north of the Dead Sea.

Alongside his agricultural work, Stizberg created landscape drawings and paintings, but then moved to sculpting.

In 1945 he changed his last name to Shemi and joined the HeHalutz Movement as a courier, carrying out missions in Italy, France and Egypt.

During the years 1955-1957 Shemi created a series of sculptures of abstract figures of animals and humans.

During the 1960s he showed his assemblage sculpture in solo exhibitions at Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels in 1964.

In 1988 Adam Baruch published the book "Yehiel Shemi: Sculptures" and a solo exhibit was help in the Ramat Gan Museum of Art.

[4] In 1997 a retrospective exhibit of his works was held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art with a biographical catalog by Michael Sgan-Cohen.