ABOUT JSS

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The Jerusalem Studio School, founded in 1998 by internationally renowned painter Israel Hershberg, offers intensive training in the art of painting and drawing. It is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence and uncompromising commitment to the art of painting and drawing, through training that is a complete immersion and is deeply rooted in artistic traditions. The JSS has set a new standard, establishing itself as the most serious art training program in the country as well as one of the finest of its kind in the world.

The core component of the Jerusalem Studio School is The Master Class, which provides an intensive full-time studio program for individuals of outstanding talent and motivation. The spirit of work and study in the Master Class is grounded in the creative process, through the immediacy of experience and continual practice rather than the critical process, which substitutes a cerebral/verbal encounter for what should be in the study of art a direct and unmediated act. At the JSS it is the doing that produces understanding. These guiding principles inform the student’s entire course of study at the JSS, whether it is the beginning student’s challenge to form painterly perceptions and develop a pictorial intellect, or the advanced student’s pursuit to understand intimately the formal underpinnings and essential structures in painting through pictorial research, copying and transcribing great master works. It is this concentrated and sustained physical involvement with our craft that ultimately reveals the quality and truth of one’s own voice.

The Continuing Studies program offers evening courses and workshops in drawing and painting to the public of all ages.  No prior experience is required.  Students are welcome to enroll throughout the year.  Taught by graduates of JSS, the various courses cover cast drawing, studies of the human figure, stillife and landscape, as well as copying from the masters.  Emphasis is given to personal instruction and individual development.

The yearly JSS Summer Program in Italy provides the only Italy program for Israeli art students, one that immerses participants in an incomparable engagement with the history of art, its idioms, pictorial conceptions, materials, methods and techniques. Living in the same atmospheric light among the architecture and distinctive forms of the Italian countryside that inspired Renaissance artists and later masters like Poussin, Ingres and Corot, our students embark upon a journey of art and imagination which nurtures a lifetime.

The JSS Gallery and Hall of Casts provides students with a unique resource: a sustained physical contact and engagement with museum quality plaster casts representing over 2500 years of art history. These casts were struck directly from the original sculpture masterworks and are the first such collection in Israel. The casts provides our students the opportunity to attain, integrate, and participate in history as artistic process through the direct experience of drawing-as-observation.

The Jerusalem Landscape Painting Marathon is a two-week intensive landscape painting experience. Set in and around Jerusalem the Marathon is an opportunity to take up the challenges of landscape painting under the guidance of an internationally recognized guest artist.

Throughout the year the JSS offers lectures, workshops and critiques by visiting artists.

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