The collection includes a significant representation of twentieth-century art, since Tel Aviv became Israel’s art center rather than Jerusalem, shortly after the inauguration of the Museum. Notable works are paintings by Reuven Rubin, Nahum Gutman, Arieh Lubin, Sionah Tagger, Moshe Castel, Pinhas Litvinovsky, Israel Paldi, and others. The influence of the Expressionist Jewish artists of the Paris School on Israeli art is evident in the works of the 1930s, and in the 1940s the influence of Canaanite ideology is also apparent. The New Horizons group, which was founded in 1948 and led Israeli art in the 1950s to landscape abstraction, is represented in the collection by Yosef Zaritsky, Yehezkel Streichman, Yehiel Krize, Itzhak Danziger, Yehiel Shemi, Avshalom Okashi, and others. Also represented are artists of other artistic movements at the time, which have received increasing recognition in recent years, such as Socialist Realism, and how they contended with issues such as the Holocaust of European Jewry or events of the Nakba. These are represented, among others, in the figurative paintings of Aharon Avni, Moshe Tamir, Ruth Schloss, Eliyahu Gat, Naftali Bezem, Gershon Knispel, but also in works by other New Horizons artists, such as Marcel Janco, Yohanan Simon, and Aharon Kahana. Mordecai Ardon represents the symbolic and mystical abstract of a Jewish-Kabbalistic bent.

The prominent artists of the 1960s are mostly men: Arie Aroch, Moshe Kupferman, Ori Reisman, Michael Gross, Raffi Lavie, Moshe Gershuni, Igael Tumarkin, Menashe Kadishman, and others. The paucity of women artists — which include Aviva Uri and Lea Nikel — is very evident, and signals a need for change. And change did come: in the 1970s, the art map began to shift, and the political preoccupation with a variety of issues, including identity politics and theoretical exploration of the artistic medium itself, came to the fore. From this period on, women artists – including Michal Na’aman, Deganit Berest, Tamar Getter, Nurit David, Pamela Levy, Jenifer Bar-Lev, Yudith Levin, Michal Rovner and Yehudit Sasportas — begin to play a central role in the local field, alongside male artists such as Nahum Tevet, Zvi Goldstein, Joshua Neustein, Pinchas Cohen Gan, David Reeb, Gabriel Klasmer, Asim Abu-Shakra, Larry Abramson, Tsibi Geva, and others. Despite the blurring of the demarcations between mediums during these years, painting and sculpture continue to be central in the twenty-first century, as evident in the collection in works by Avner Ben-Gal, Khen Shish, Gil Marco Shani, Zamir Shatz, Michael Halak, Alma Itzhaky, Eli Petel, Reuven Israel, Yael Efrati, and others. Alongside them, video and installation art occupy a growing central place in the collection, in the work of artists such as Guy Ben-Ner, Tamir Zadok, Ruti Sela, Ohad Meromi, Michal Helfman, Sigalit Landau, Yael Bartana, Mika Rottenberg, Nira Pereg, Jan Tichy, Maya Zack, Gil Yefman, Ben Hagari, Tamar Harpaz, Nevet Yitzhak, and others.

The Museum’s collection of Israeli art reflects, in real time, what is happening in the local art scene. At the same time, it outlines a picture of the Zeitgeist over a period of over a century. The construction of the collection over the years reflects and informs the Museum’s constant pursuit of its mission to exhibit Israeli art and to produce research and documentary catalogues about it.