Esther Beer Percal who was born in Trieste before the War, studied painting at the Fine Arts Institute in Venice. Following her marriage she decided, together with her husband, to immigrate to Israel. She lived on a kibbutz where she gave birth to her two sons. At present, she divides her time between Trieste and Tel Aviv. She has presented her work at both collective and individual exhibitions in Israel, North America, Italy and France. In the last thirty years she has created many environmental works of art for public buildings, both secular and religious in many places in Israel, using various techniques (ceramics, cement, aluminum moulding, copper engravings, wall carpets and  paintings on glass), particularly in Acre (High Relief), memorials at Tel Hashomer, in Jaffa (the Museum of Independence), in Hod Hasharon (Holocaust Memorial) and particularly in Tel Aviv where she has decorated many public buildings and synagogues.
Since early '70ies Esther Beer Percal  is an artist highly valued in Israel not only for her pictorial and graphic work, but also for the stained glass, the earthenstones and  the decoration of public spaces.Percal pictoial work expresses innwer and apparently "private ways, whereas her public work hints to a thoroughgoing involement with History.
Individual story and collective history are constantly woven together in the life and work of this artist and shape her  expressive world of signs, strong and yet restrained. She sets to her art the goal of  portraying the complexity and the intricacies of the inner life in its confrontation with the implacable hardships (and cruelties) of the present. The method of Percal’s stern and passionate art is symbolism: guiding primary images are chosen to lead us into her perceptive tales, following into the footsteps of Jewish tradition in the visual arts.  The images-signs-containers repeat themselves from one work to another as the characters of a private alphabet, giving no escape to the viewer apart from the emotional explosion of colour: the house, the flower, the dining table, the birds, the handkerchief.

Marina Beer