Nachum Gutman | Young Women by the Tap, 1929

In his paintings of Jaffa and its orange groves from the 1920s and 1930s, Nachum Gutman crafted an image of the Land of Israel that blended reality, Orientalism and the Zionist vision. Arab figures, perceived as being connected to the land and the Biblical landscape, served as his visual model of the “New Hebrew”. Water, symbolizing vitality, fertility and progress, bridges local nature and Zionist modernity, anchoring the presence of the young women within the future space.
The year of the work’s creation – 1929, a year marked by violent Palestinian riots - casts a historical shadow over the pastoral scene: The picturesque utopia is taking place at a moment of rupture, inviting a critical look at the how the landscape, its figures and its resources have become part of the image of the Land and of the Hebrew vision.