Early Work

	Paintings in Kula
	Brother and Sister	Neretva River	Ozana
	Shafir's early experiments in painting were landscapes and portraits depicting life in Kula, a small village in southern Yugoslavia, where her family took refuge during the war. Using oil paints that were salvaged from happier years, Shafir painted on book covers and traded her paintings as exchange for food. Later in Israel, she rendered the faces of new immigrants, survivors of the holocaust like herself, whose facial features reflected their diverse ethnic origins. In the early sixties, as the need to depict sad Jewish faces subsided, Shafir turned to nature as a source of inspiration and created a rich set of watercolor paintings full of whimsical creatures and imaginary worlds. Click on the above images to view selected artwork.