Chana Orloff (1888 - 1968) Chana Orloff was a Ukrainian Israeli Jewish figurative sculptor, one of the many Jewish artists who flocked to Paris in the early twentieth century. Orloff’s preferred medium was wood, but she also worked in stone, marble, bronze and cement. Her subjects included the painters,animals, especially birds, ordinary men and women, and women as mothers. Orloff was born in 1888 in Ukraine.She and her family immigrated to Palestine in 1905 when Orloff was eighteen. After five years in Israel, Chana Orloff decided to go to Paris.At the time, Paris was considered the art capital of the world and the city attracted many foreign artists, including many Jewish ones, who Orloff came to know in Montparnasse. Orloff studied sculpture at the Russian Academy in Montparnasse and became friendly with Modigliani, Soutine, Pascin, Zadkine, Lipchitz, and Chagall. In 1913, heavily influenced by cubism, Orloff took part in the Salon d’Automne and exhibited her work several times in Paris. Over the next few years, Orloff matured quickly as a sculptor in Paris and her work was soon being displayed at important art exhibitions in Paris, Amsterdam and New York. By the 1920s, Orloff’s reputation was already well established, especially for her portraits. In 1928, Orloff’s sculptures were exhibited in the United States and in 1937 an entire room was devoted to her works in the Petit Palais in Paris. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Orloff frequently received visits from Palestinian artists, Zionist leaders, students, and Palestinian art lovers in her Paris home. The first exhibition of Orloff’s work in Palestine was in the spring of 1935 at the Tel Aviv Museum. Chana Orloff fled Paris for Switzerland. She returned to Paris in 1948. Following Israel’s independence, Orloff spent an increasing amount of time in Israel. In 1949 the Tel Aviv Museum held an exhibition of 37 of her sculptures. Over the following decade, Orloff’s works were exhibited numerous times throughout Israel. In 1968, Orloff fell ill when she returned to Israel to organize a retrospective exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum.Orloff was buried in Israel at the Kiriat Shaul cemetery.