In the early 1960s, when the activity of Jacob Steinhardt (1887-1968) and Isidor Ascheim (1891-1968) came to an end, it was also the end of lithographic activity in Israel, except for a number of attempts by Moshe Cohen (1897-1964). There were artists who continued to work in other forms of printmaking, separately and each in his or her field – Jacob Pins and Miron Sima in woodcutting; Naomi Smilansky, Tuvia Beeri and Aryeh Rotman in etching, to name a few – but lithography had no successors. If due to its complexity, which requires vast knowledge; due to substantial technical difficulties or due to other reasons altogether – interest in lithography diminished almost entirely. In those days, David Ben-Shaul (1932-2018) had just returned from Paris with a lithography press, and with much devotion and enthusiasm founded a lithography workshop for his personal use. He printed for himself as well as others, and was in fact, for a long time, the only Israeli artist in the field, until the Jerusalem Print Workshop and the workshop at Ein Hod were founded.

In 1987 a retrospective exhibition of Ben-Shaul’s work was exhibited at the workshop. We decided to hold a new solo exhibition of his work, for we see it as a landmark in the history of Israeli graphic art.