Moses Kottler

Moses Kottler
Born	Moses Kottler ca. 1890 Joniskis, Šiauliai Lithuania
Died	1977 Johannesburg Transvaal, South Africa
Nationality	Russian, South African
Education	Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem (1911–1912)
Known for	Sculpting, Painting
Notable work	Small Coloured Girl (1917), oil on cardboard, 42 x 35.5 cm, Johannesburg Art Gallery D. C. Boonzaier (1918), oil on canvas, 45 x 34.5, South African National Gallery Meidjie (1926), cypress wood, 156 cm (including base), Johannesburg Art Gallery
Movement	Cubism, Symbolism, German Expressionism, Cape Impressionism, New Group
Awards	Medal for Sculpture (1962) Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns

Moses Kottler (1896–1977) was a South African painter and sculptor. He is widely regarded, along with Anton van Wouw and Lippy Lipshitz, as one of the most important South African sculptors. This triumvirate had the distinction of also having excelled at using pictorial media; Lipshitz with monotypes and Van Wouw in painting and drawing. Kottler's work in oils earned him additional consideration as a painter.

Moses Kottler, nicknamed Moshe, was the eighth child of Joseph Kottler and Zirla Solin. His father was a trader of agricultural goods and their home – opposite a synagogue – seems to have been prosperous by the standards of Jews in Czarist Russia. Their home language was Yiddish, but Moses also gained command of German and Russian during his youth. He displayed manual dexterity and superior drawing ability from an early age. Moses' remarkable manual dexterity soon came to the attention of an uncle, Haim Israel Sacks, who was a leading Zionist. He took a photograph of a snowman Moses had created, and showed it to a sculptor, Ilya Jakovlevich Günzburg, while at a Zionist congress in Vilnius. Günzburg advised that the boy be trained as a sculptor.

Discrimination against Jews, compulsory military service and the twin booms of the Witwatersrand Gold Rush (1886), and Second Ostrich Boom (1860–1914) sparked emigration of Jewish families to South Africa. By 1909, only Joseph, Zirla and their three youngest children were left of the Kottler family in Russia. The rest had left for South Africa. Moses was sent to the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, to study under Boris Schatz. Six months later, in 1910, the remaining family left for Oudtshoorn, South Africa.

Kottler's experience at the Bezalel School was a disappointment; he received no training in sculpture or painting at all. Instead, he used the time to train himself and started painting in oils during a visit to Tel Aviv. Little more than six months of training at Bezalel were enough to convince him to continue his studies at the Munich Art Academy. After submission of some drawings, he was accepted at the Academy, but unable to secure a place in the sculpture continued with drawing and painting. He had Carl Johann Becker-Gundahl and Hugo von Habermann as his professors.

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