Science Fair Project Encyclopedia Leon Bibel (b.1913 d.1995) was
noted as a painter and printmaker of the Great Depression. His
themes were the social condition of workers and the politics of
protest and war, although cityscapes and landscapes were
included among his works. He later developed works in wood of
especially Jewish themes. These included fanciful miniature
buildings influenced by European spice boxes, figures and
objects within shadow boxes, and even a synagogue ark. Leon
Bibel was born in Poland in 1913, growing up in the shtetl of
Shebreshin. He immigrated to the United States with his family.
After graduating from Polytechnic High School in San Francisco,
he trained at the California School of Fine Arts and apprenticed
under the German Impressionist Maria Riedelstein and assisted
Bernard Zackheim , himself a student of Diego Rivera, on the
frescoes of the San Francisco Jewish Community Center and the
University of California at San Francisco's Toland Hall. He
resided in New York beginning in 19