Born in Poland just before the turn of the twentieth century, as a young man Mordecai Ardon spent five years at the Weimar Bauhaus, studying under Klee, Kandinsky and Feininger, among others. Klee’s approach to abstraction was of particular interest to the young artist, who came to think of Klee as a mentor, and was especially influenced by Klee’s need to depict the unseen, the secret and the mystical. The two become close, and Ardon even rented a small room in Klee’s home.

As tensions in Germany began to rise before World War II, Ardon immigrated to Israel where he found a teaching post at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, one of Jerusalem’s most renowned art schools. In Israel he found skies with blinding light and overwhelmingly colorful sunsets. The intense Israeli light and desert landscapes served as an inspiration for Ardon, who deftly married them with symbolic images from the Jewish mystical tradition and his background in German abstraction. Clement Greenberg recognized the importance of Ardon's landscapes as early as 1948 after viewing the artist's first solo exhibition which took place at the Jewish Museum in New York: "Bronstein's [Ardon's] chief direction is expressionist, and in his smaller ... canvases there are many reminders of Soutine. However, his best work—especially the apocalyptic and monumental landscapes...displays an expressionism modified by cubism. These paintings are brought to the verge of the abstract by their texture, which consists of a multiplicity of cross-hatched little brushstrokes that create a surface in which shapes dissolve, and underneath whose seeming monotony rhythmic variations of hue and value work powerfully" (The Nation, New York, March 6, 1948, p. 248). These brushstrokes became one of the most identifiable components of Ardon's mature style.