Abel Pann [Pfeffermann] was born in Latvia in 1883. His father was a rabbi and the head of a yeshiva (Jewish religious school). At an early age he showed interest in drawing and studied in an art school in Odessa (1898). In 1903, he moved to Paris and continued his studies at the Grande Chaumiere, an art academy. One of his teachers was the French painter Adolphe William Bourguereau and another Yehuda Pan, teacher of Chagall. His works aroused much interest, winning him prizes and medals. His works were exhibited together with those of Renoir and Matisse. He contributed to journals of humor and was a member of the "Salon des Humoristes" in Paris. In the course of time he became well known as a caricaturist in the French capital. In 1913, he went to Palestine and taught at the Bezalel Academy of Art, Jerusalem, for a year. A few weeks before World War I broke out, he traveled to Paris, intending to return to Palestine shortly afterwards. Because of the war he was prevented from doing so. When it became known that pogroms had taken place in Russia, he drew paintings on that theme, his purpose being to print reproductions of them. In 1916 he painted the series, "Road of Tears", drawings and lithographs of the Russian pogroms. However, the Russian Minister in Paris was informed of this project and succeeded in convincing the French government of the necessity to forbid the printing. During the war, he painted war subjects, depicting French patriotism and the French war effort. In 1917, he traveled to the United States where the Union of Museums organized exhibitions of his works in several cities. He became known as a Jewish artist. In 1920, he returned to Palestine to settle permanently and until 1924 taught again at Bezalel. In 1921, he established the first lithographic installation in Palestine, where lithographs of his works were made from a printing machine he had imported from Vienna.
