1918

Lea Nikel (Nikelsberg) is born on 6 December in Zhitomir, Ukraine.

1920

Following an outbreak of antisemitic attacks, the family immigrates to Mandatory Palestine and settles in Jerusalem.

Lea Nikel’s mother, Bat Sheva (right), her father, Chaim Nikelsberg (center), and her mother’s sister, Yoecheved (left), Zhitomir, Ukraine.

1922

The family relocates to Tel Aviv

1926

Nikel’s sister, Sara, is born in Tel Aviv.

“I grew up in Tel Aviv, and I’m connected to Tel Aviv to this day... but Tel Aviv, in its time, was sands upon sands, and we ran about on them barefoot, and when we wore sandals or shoes they always filled up with sand. The sand from beside the beach, the white sand, was also there next to the Talipiot School which I went to. Everywhere you went there were white sands.”

Lea and Sara at the Tel Aviv Zoo.

1930

Nikel attends the “Talpiot” primary school, a religious school for girls.

"My note-books were full of drawings, but the art teacher didn't see me as a star, because I didn't draw accurately from nature. There was always some deformation in what I did. Already as a child I had no interest in drawing from nature."

During a class trip, Nikel visits the Bezalel National Museum in Jerusalem.

“It was quite a miserable museum but I moved around the paintings deeply stirred, as if I were visiting the Louvre or a temple. In one of the corners of the exhibiton there was a drawing on which there was one line only. I looked at that line with great excitement, and something strange happened to me - I felt as though I had entered into the line, was breathing inside the line, and I didn’t know if I was the line or the line was I.”

After primary school, Nikel is sent to commercial school, where she learns languages, typing, and shorthand.

1935

Nikel visits an exhibition by Mane Katz at a gallery on Allenby Street.

She begins studying art with the painter Chaim Gliksberg. At the same time, she studies dance at Gertrud Kraus’s studio.

“Both to Glicksberg and to Kraus, I would only come to classes when I was distressed or longing for the transcendence of the soul. I had no discipline in those days, I did it to give myself pleasure or joy.”

During her high-school years, she frequents cafes where artists sit - “Ararat”, for example - and she listens to the writers speaking but does not speak.

Lea Nikel, aged 17.

1940

Lea Nikel marries Gert Alter Tock. The two have one daughter, Ziva. Nikel seldom paints during this period. In 1943, the two seperate.

1946

Nikel begins attending the famous "Studia" - an unofficial art school headed by Yehezkel Streichman and Avigdor Stematsky.

“Lea Nikel paints like a bird sings”.
- Avigdor Stematsky

At the “Studia”, she is mainly Stematsky’s pupil. She paints in the morning hours, when she can, although the hours of the “Studia” are from 7 to 10 pm. Nikel works different jobs, from waitressing to secreterarial work, in order to support herself and her daughter.

“There was excitement at the Studia, enthusiasm and a love of painting. We painted small paintings, because there was no room. We spoke a lot about simplicity and especially about seriousness of attitude to art.”

Lea Nikel and artist Eliyahu Gat, 1949.

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