Born Mordecai Bronstein to a Hassidic family in Turchow, Poland, Ardon traveled a path common to many twentieth century Jewish artists. He studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany from 1920-1926, the leading European avant-garde center at the time, where he befriended Paul Klee and other prominent artists of the period. He then moved to Berlin and came to Palestine in 1933 with the first wave of immigration of the German intellectual elite. In Palestine he found refuge from growing persecution in Germany, but as a Marxist, he had little interest in Zionism. However, when he arrived in Jerusalem, the landscape infused his art with new subject matter and new meaning; and throughout his career, the physical reality of the landscapes he painted was of great importance to him. Concurrently, Ardon searched for the hidden and the beyond, breaking through the boundaries of landscape into the celestial. Stars and cosmic explosions populate many of his later works, which nevertheless maintain their likeness to the landscape. Ardon exerted considerable influence on Israeli art both as an artist and as a teacher, and in recognition; he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1964. He served as director of the Bezalel Academy of the Arts from 1940-1952 and then as advisor to the Education Ministry, where he sought to promote professional training for artists and greater appreciation for the arts among the Israeli public. In addition to the Israel Museum, his works are represented in the Tate Gallery, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. (*Tel Aviv Museum of Art).
