Year Zero

On the eve of World War II, Dr. Karl Schwarz, the first director of Tel Aviv Museum, embarked on a final, desperate trip to Europe, hoping to rescue a work of art he had seen in his youth in Berlin. He traced the artwork in Amsterdam, and persuaded its owner to send it to Tel Aviv. This painting and thousands of others saved by Schwarz between 1933 and 1945, became the nucleus of the museum’s Modern Art Collection. The exhibition, featuring works by Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, and Käthe Kollwitz, recounts these stories on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.