Siona Shimshi

Siona Shimshi was born on July 14, 1939, in Tel Aviv, to Haya Rivka (Kuklanski) and Avraham Shimshi, who had immigrated to Mandate Palestine from Lithuania in 1933.^[1][4][5][6] She married Jachin Hirsch, an Israeli filmmaker, in 1961.^[7]

She studied at the Avni Institute in Tel Aviv from 1956 to 1959, with Avigdor Stematsky, Yehezkel Streichman, and Moshe Mokady.^[4][8][9] She also studied ceramics at Alfred University in New York, from 1959 to 1962, as well as at Greenwich House Pottery in New York City.^{[4][5][10][11]}

In 1965, she was a co-founder of a group of artists called the "10+ Group", along with artists Buky Schwartz, Raffi Lavie, and others.^[12][13]

Shimshi was head of the Ceramic Design Department and taught as a professor at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, from 1979 to 1987.^{[4][8][14][15][16]} In 1979, she designed the set for a performance of A Simple Story by Shmuel Yosef Agnon for the Habimah Theater in Tel Aviv.^[4]

In 1993–94, she was the curator of an exhibition of Dora Gad, in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.^[4][17]

Among her creations are a work in wood that is exhibited in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, a wall hanging at the Tel Aviv Hilton, a 1998 sculpture for Israel's 50th anniversary that is exhibited in Holon, glass walls at Kennedy Airport in New York City, and a 2004 portrait painting of Natan Alterman that appears on the facade of Tel Aviv City Hall.^[4][18]

Shimshi was awarded the 1988 Arie El Hanani Prize by the Joshua Rabinowitz Foundation for Arts, for her sculpture in Goren Goldstein Park in Tel Aviv.^[4]

Shimshi died in Tel Aviv on October 16, 2018, at the age of 79.^[19] She was buried at Yarkon Cemetery.

• Israeli ceramics