Moshe Elazar Castel born in Jerusalem, in 1909. He opened religious schools for Sephardi boys in the Nahalat Shiv'a and Bukharim quarters of Jerusalem. Moshe grew up in the Bukharim neighborhood, where he attended his father's school. At the age of 13, he was accepted to the Bezalel Art School, directed by Boris Schatz, where he studied from 1921-1925. His teacher, Shmuel Ben-David, encouraged him to study art in Paris. Moshe traveled to Paris in 1927, where he attended Academie Julien and Ecole du Louvre. In May 1927, the World Union of Hebrew Youth in Paris sponsored his first exhibit. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who was in Paris at the time, wrote an introduction for the catalogue.

In 1940, Castel returned his home and settled in Safed. In 1946, Castel was awarded the Dizengoff Prize by the Tel-Aviv Municipality. He won the "Premier do Estado" prize at the São Paulo Art Biennial in Brazil. In 1959, he purchased a studio in Montparnasse where he worked for several months a year. In 1955, a solo exhibition of his works was mounted at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. His murals hang in the Knesset, Binyanei HaUma Convention Center, Rockefeller Center in New York, and the official residence of the President of Israel in Jerusalem. The Moshe Castel Museum of Art, in a building designed by Israeli architect David Resnik overlooking the desert landscape, opened in Ma'aleh Adumim in 2010.

From 1928 to 1940 Moshe Castel participates in individual and group exhibitions in well known galleries and "salons" in Paris.

Aside thousands of exhibition importance his career is marked with the following; The first exhibition of abstract art in Israel Mural painting in 1955 on the entire top floor of the Tel Aviv Museum and Israel Mural painting for "El Al" offices at Rockefeller Center, New York. In 1958 Mural glass painting "Face to the Future" at the National Convention Center in Jerusalem. He executed several basalt mural painting for the states of Israel (1966 for the Knesset, the Israel Parliament in Jerusalem and in 1970 for the ceremonial hall of the Presidential Mansion in Jerusalem). In 1989 Opening Exhibition of Beer-Sheva Museum of Israeli Art and 1987 Yurek Gallery, Ramat Hasharon Dania Art Gallery, Haifa.