Mordecai Ardon was a Polish-born Israeli artist. Ardon was awarded the Israel Prize for painting in 1963.   Beginning in the 1950's Ardon adopted a complex system of symbolic images in his paintings, taken from the Jewish Mystical tradition (Kabbalah), from the Bible and from a tangible reality. In his painting "Gates of Light", for example, he expressed "the inner mystery and timelessness of the landscape." His work seeks to impart a cosmic dimension to the present, linking it to antiquity and mystery.

Ardon was seen as the father of the regional approach in Israeli art. ​​