Chana Orloff was born on July 12 in Tsaré-Constantinovska, a small town in Ukraine. She is the eighth in a family of nine children. Her mother and grandmother were midwives and her father was a teacher, then, when Jews were banned from practicing this profession, he became a trader. In 1905 the family emigrated to Palestine, her father cultivated the land and Chana helped her parents by doing sewing work.
In 1910, Chana arrived in Paris and became an apprentice in the Paquin haute couture house. The following year, she ranked second in the admission exam to the École des arts décoratifs and attended the Marie-Vassilief Academy. Here she met many artists including Picasso, Foujita, Apollinaire, Modigliani… and created her first sculpture, a portrait of her grandmother, based on a photo.
In 1916 Chana married Ary Justman, a Polish poet, and exhibited in that period alongside Matisse, Rouault and Van Dongen. She participates with Ary in the avant-garde magazine SIC that Pierre Albert-Birot has just created. Here Ary Justman’s “Poetic Thoughts” appear, accompanied by her reproductions of sculptures. Two years after the marriage, Elie, nicknamed Didi, was born. In 1919 Ary, who joined the American Red Cross, died of the Spanish flu leaving Chana and their son alone in Paris.
In the early 1920s, Chana Orloff became the portraitist of the Parisian elite. Portraiture will remain one of his favorite themes. In 1925, she obtained both French nationality and the Legion of Honor and became a member of the Salon d'Automne. She exhibited in Paris and Amsterdam while having her residence and atelier built by Auguste Perret, Villa Seurat in Paris.
She left in 1928 for her first trip to the United States, where she exhibited in the avant-garde gallery Weyhe Gallery in New York. This particular exhibition will be picked up by many galleries from the East Coast to the West Coast.
In 1930, Meïr Dizengoff, first mayor of Tel Aviv, visited her and asked her to help create the Tel Aviv Museum. During the four years that the museum's construction lasted, she produced numerous portraits of personalities from the world of the arts. Her first exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1935 was a great success. In 1937, she participated in the exhibition “Les Maîtres de l’art indépendant” at the Petit Palais with around thirty sculptures.
After the exodus, returning to Paris under the Occupation, Chana Orloff leads a difficult life and although constantly in danger continues to work. She creates a series of small pieces that she calls « pocket sculptures » On the eve of the Vél' d'Hiv roundup she was warned by two French friends – her founder the famous Rudier, who saved many of her works, and a senior police official – that her arrest was imminent. She left her studio and went with her son to Grenoble then to Lyon where they met the painter Georges Kars. Together they will manage to cross the Franco-Swiss border.
In 1945, she exhibited her works created in Switzerland at the Georges-Moos gallery in Geneva; the criticism is enthusiastic. She returned to Paris at the Liberation and found her atelier ransacked and pillaged by the Nazis. She gets back to work. A year later, she exhibited around thirty sculptures and a series of drawings at the Galerie de France. The sculpture entitled "The Return" expresses the ordeal of a deportee and shocks critics. Questioned by journalists about her life in Switzerland, Chana Orloff especially mentions that of Georges Kars. Unable after the war to resume a normal life the painter committed suicide the day after the Liberation jumping from the second floor of the Geneva hotel where Chana Orloff had installed him the day before.
The period from 1946 to 1949 is that of major retrospectives and the definitive consecration of Chana Orloff. After Paris, the artist exhibited in Amsterdam, Oslo, New York, Chicago, San Francisco.
« What a joy, writes the poet Yvan Goll, _to find again in New York, at the Wildenstein gallery, this powerful artist whose face and work are so familiar to the people of Montparnasse... The works that she presents to us at Wildenstein attest that “her grip" has lost none of its vigor and masculine strength, but a profound humanity envelops her characters in loving tenderness... »
Chana arrived in Israel in 1949 after a triumphant tour in Europe and the United States. She exhibits at the Tel Aviv Museum, Jerusalem and Haifa. She worked in the country and created, among other things, the portrait of David Ben-Gurion as well as the Maternity erected in Ein Guev in memory of Chana Tuchman Alderstein, a member of this kibbutz who fell during the war of liberation. During the following ten years, alongside her studio sculpture, she executed numerous monuments linked to the history of the State of Israel.
In 1961 the major retrospective took place at the Tel Aviv Museum, the Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem, the Haifa Museum of Modern Art and the Ein Harod Art Museum. After Israel, the exhibition is presented at the Granoff gallery, Place Beauvau in Paris. In 1965 she exhibited at the Herzelia Museum and an important bronze bas-relief, a Dove of Peace, which was unveiled at the House of the Nation (Binyaneh-Ha'ouma) in Jerusalem.\n\nIn 1968 Chana Orloff arrived in Israel for a retrospective exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum on the occasion of her 80th birthday. Falling ill, she died at the Tel Hashomer hospital, near Tel-Aviv, on December 18, 1968. She was buried at the Kriat Shaul cemetery in Tel-Aviv. Elie, her son, will have the funerary monument she was working on placed on her tomb.
