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Every study of modern art in Israel will mention the role played indirectly in it, by the work of Henri Rousseau. Eager to find a new artistic language through which their unique experience could be expressed, young artists from the Bezalel School in Jerusalem (founded in 1906) rebelled against their academic teachers and went to Paris in the 1920s. Rousseau's "innocence" matched their need to return to basics, because they felt they "began anew," exiles returning to their ancient land, rediscovering its landscape and remodelling its culture. These artists, among them Reuven Rubin, assimilated Rousseau's influence and when they returned to Jerusalem created what has since been recognised as the beginning of modern painting in Israel - "The Eretz-Israel School."

Even before the creation of the State of Israel popular or naive artists must have lived in the Holy Land, whether Jewish, Christian or Moslem, but there is very little record of their existence. In an exhibition called "Arts and Crafts in l9th-Century Eretz-Israel," held at the Israel Museum in 1979, three Jewish folk artists were represented: Moshe Mizrahi, Shlomo Janiwer,originally from Jerusalem, and Joseph Zvi Geiger of Safed. It is now commonly accepted that Shalom of Safed, the best known contemporary Israeli naive, has in his own way, continued their tradition.

Israeli museums, especially the Haifa Museum, have collected and shown works by local naive painters through the years, but the first attempt at presenting an overall picture of naive art was made in 1966 by the Israel Museum. Since there is no catalogue of that show, it is hard to discover how many artists were represented in it. The Tel Aviv Museum followed in 1970, this time with a catalogue listing eighteen participants. Occasionally, but not often, curators include works by naive painters in theme-exhibitions: "From Landscape to Abstraction, from Abstraction to Nature," at the Israel Museum, 1972, included Shalom of Safed and Moshe Elnatan. "Artist and Society," at the Tel Aviv Museum, 1979, included Elnatan and Gabriel Cohen.

Naive artists do not enjoy great popularity in Israel, and find it much easier to sell their works abroad than at home. They have made their mark at international exhibitions, such as those in Munich and Zurich in 1974. Anatole Jakovsky included five Israeli naive artists in his Lexicon, while West German television made a documentary about them in the series "Naives of the World."

The following are included in this encyclopaedia as the most important. Shalom of Safed (died 1980), Natan Heber (died 1975), Gabriel Cohen (born 1940), Shimshon Lemberger (born 1910) and Menahem Messinger (born 1900). There are women among naive painters in Israel, but none of them has yet produced an important oeuvre.

The above-mentioned artists only rarely knew of each other. Raised in traditional Jewish families, they still reflect different cultural sources through their work: Shalom of Safed was a typical Jewish-Palestinian artist, continuing a tradition known from the l9th century, but probably as old as the Jewish post-biblical settlement of the Holy Land. Moshe Elnatan and Gabriel Cohen are Jews from the East, who imbibed the Moslem culture which surrounded their ancestors in Iraq, Persia and Turkey. Natan Heber, Shimshon Lemberger and Menahem Messinger came from Poland and their work stems from the culture of the East-European stetl.