Monday, February 29, 2016

About Alex Katz



Alex Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. In 1928, at the outset of the Depression, his family moved to St. Albans, a diverse suburb of Queens that had sprung up between the two wars. Katz was raised in St. Albans by his Russian parents. His mother had been an actress and possessed a deep interest in poetry and his father, a businessman, also had an interest in the arts. Katz attended Woodrow Wilson High School for its unique program that allowed him to devote his mornings to academics and his afternoons to the arts. In 1946, Katz entered The Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan, a prestigious college of art, architecture, and engineering.

At The Cooper Union, Katz studied painting under Morris Kantor and was trained in Modern art theories and techniques. Upon graduating in 1949, Katz was awarded a scholarship for summer study at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in Maine, a grant that he would renew the following summer. During his years at Cooper Union, Katz had been exposed primarily to modern art and was taught to paint from drawings. Skowhegan exposed him to painting from life, which would prove pivotal in his development as a painter and remains a staple of his practices today. Katz explains that Skowhegan’s plein airpainting gave him “a reason to devote my life to painting.”

Katz’s first one-person show was held at the Roko Gallery in 1954. Katz had begun to develop greater acquaintances with the New York School and their allies in the other arts; he counted amongst his friends’ figurative painters Larry Rivers and Fairfield Porter, photographer Rudolph Burckhardt, and poets John Ashbery, Edwin Denby, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler. From 1955 to 1959, usually following a day of painting, Katz made small collages of figures in landscapes from hand-colored strips of delicately cut paper. In the late 1950s, he moved towards greater realism in his paintings. Katz became increasingly interested in portraiture, and painted his friends and his wife and muse, Ada. He embraced monochrome backgrounds, which would become a defining characteristic of his style, anticipating Pop Art and separating him from gestural figure painters and the New Perceptual Realism. In 1959, Katz made his first cutout, which would grow into a series of flat “sculptures;” freestanding or relief portraits that exist in actual space.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

About Adriana Naveh



Adriana Naveh was born in Mendoza, Argentina, the land of sun and superb wine. Adriana lives in Jerusalem with her two children. The city, a spiritual center for all religions and full of golden light, is the source of inspiration for her pieces, even if the city does not appear in them explicitly, its essence does. Her work while representing everyday life scenes carries an atmosphere of spiritual introspection.

In her canvases, she work mainly with large palette knifes as not to get lost in unnecessary details. This allows her to concentrate her energies in large spaces with just a few, energetic and determined strokes of paint. This method enables her to follow her impulses, to paint with spontaneity but, at the same time, holding back, which helps the synthesis of the shapes.
It is like talking about calm chaos, like depicting liberty with order. I make use of my intuition while intermingling it with a disorganized and, at the same time, organized nature.With the use of an interesting medium, plaster spactula original urban photographs and large open spaces, there is new meaning to the power of simplicity in composition.

Recently I began to work on aluminum with acrylic paint with several layers of lacquer. Working with this material forces different types of compositions, pushing me in the direction of colorful, abstract urban landscapes.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

About Inbal Buzaglo Yoresh



Inbal Buzaglo Yoresh was born in 1963 in Israel. 
Inbal is a graduate of the department of visual communications of 'Bezalel, Academy of Arts & Design', Jerusalem with a specialization in animation. 
Following her studies, she continued her career in animation, working for the Israeli news department of channel 1 as a broadcast graphic designer.
Today Inbal is solely dedicated to her painting and her family. 
With her husband and three children, Inbal lives in a home that they designed and built on a small mountain top community in the Western Galilee,
where the family lives close to nature in a rural environment. 
In her large loft studio, Inbal paints with oil on expansive canvases. 
Nudity is a continual focus and theme in her work. 
In her paintings, she expresses her view of the primitive essence of the human body as a universal creature without the bounds of nationality, 
societal, or cultural associations of identity and status. 
Inbal presents her figures naked as they were born - completely free from the protection of external covers.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

About Igael Tumarkin



Igael Tumarkin was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1933.
Immigrated to Israel at the age of two, with his mother, who married Herzl Tumarkin. He was raised in Tel Aviv and Bat Yam. In 1954 he studied with Rudi Lehman, in Ein Hod.
In 1955 he moved to Berlin to work as a scenographer for Bertolt Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble. In 1956 returned to Israel and created his first iron sculpture, inspired by Dantziger: two owls sitting atop each other. In the following years he started creating sculptures from different scraps and iron, which he defines "Absurd creations - archeology in present time." In 1961 went to the Negev region and built models of landscape sculptures.
In 1962 traveled to Japan and the US to study Japanese painting techniques. A year later returned to Israel and created his Dessert sculptures in Arad and Dimona. He then began sculpting using weapons and their different parts (like his famous Hu Halach Basadot - He Walked the Fields, from 1967). He also created several notable monuments such as the Peace Monument in Lod, constructed from tank parts, and the famous Holocaust Memorial in Rabin Square. In 2004 he received the prestigious Pras Yisrael (Israel Prize) for art.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

About Gadi Fraiman



Gadi Fraiman made his entry to the artistic world in a very young age. A descendant of the famous Fraiman family from Poland, Gadi repatriated to Israel with his family in 1966. A son of holocaust survivors, young Gadi started to look for creative ways of expressing his feelings and emotions and ultimately turned to "speaking" through lines and colors.

Following his marriage to Flora, Gadi moved to kibbutz Mishmar David near the Judaean Mountains and the couple have three children. Gadi started sculpting in 1982 and for many years it was a hobby to him, alongside his main occupation as a vineyard farmer. Over the years, Gadi turned sculpting into a profession, and, ultimately, a way of life.

The art was Gadi's partner and companion throughout his life, allowing the largely-needed expression of his personality, his self. His works can be distinguished via a flow of lines, softness and concealed emotion that bursts out from inside the stone.

To enrich his knowledge and skill, Gadi spent several years in Italy, the stronghold of artistic sculpture. There he attended a variety of courses, learning about different ways to approach the stone, familiarizing himself with artistic legacy that passes from father to son and establishing his attitude towards the material.

Today, Gadi is a renowned bronze and stone sculptor and recently started incorporating color into his bronze sculptures. His artistic works are exhibited in various famous galleries in Israel and abroad and some of them are part of notable private collections. Gadi had also completed several unique projects for many cities in Israel and the US.

Monday, February 22, 2016

About Alex Levin



Born in 1975, Alex Levin, is an artist whose works are admired worldwide. Originally from Kiev, Ukraine, has been displayed in numerous private, corporate and institutional collections in the U.S., Israel, France, Italy, Ukraine, Switzerland and Belgium. His work focuses on surrealism and realism and features a range of work using oil, acrylic, pencil, charcoal and tempera paints. One of his favorite and most used techniques is 16th century multi-layering technique using tempera and oil without using brush strokes.

Alex Levin eventually immigrated to Israel and served three years in the Israel Army. In 1997, he entered the industrial and web design program in Tel Aviv which was a great benefit for his art work. Levin’s work has been acknowledged by many influential figures, including: actor and producer Richard Gere, Madonna, jazz player Oscar Peterson, and former president of Israel Ezer Weizman.

For over 10 years, Alex was studying new art styles and techniques with Professor Baruch Elron who was the Chairman of Israel Artist Association.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

About Yosl Bergner



Yosl Bergner was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1920 and grew up in Warsaw, Poland.

With rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization was formed in the United States in July 1935, to search for a potential Jewish homeland. Soon afterwards a pastoral firm in Australia offered the League about 16,500 square kilometres (6,400 sq mi) in the Kimberleys, stretching from the north of Western Australia into the Northern Territory. As history showed, the plans went nowhere. But for a time, the Australian idea was at least worth considering. Bergner's father, Melech Ravitch, became involved in a serious investigation of the Kimberley Plan.

In this way the Bergner family moved to Australia. Yosl emigrated to Australia in 1937 and studied in the National Gallery School in Melbourne until the outbreak of War World II. He served for four and a half years in the Australian Army, and later continued his studies at the Art School.

In Melbourne from 1937–48, Bergner befriended many of the local artists who now epitomize modern Australian art: Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, John Perceval and Arthur Boyd. Adrian Lawlor moved with his wife to a cottage at Warrandyte, an outer suburb of Melbourne, where they lived for 30 years. Bergner was a frequent visitor at their Warrandyte home. All the men socialized together. Bergner encouraged them to go beyond their traditional landscape style and introduced a more radical concern for working families, thus having an important impact on Australian art.

Bergner may not have been prepared for the plight of many struggling Australians. Yet he felt a strong connection between the suffering of people everywhere, whether they were the Jews that he remembered from Europe, landless blacks in the heart of Australia or hungry children in inner urban Melbourne.

He left Australia in 1948 and after two years of traveling and exhibiting in Paris, Montreal and New York, he settled in Israel. He lived in Safed until moving to Tel Aviv in 1957.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

About Isaac Maimon



Maimon has a lifetime of practice bringing beauty to his work, exhibiting a love for art and for its creation since his youth in Tel Aviv, Israel. His love for la vie Francais was likely inspired by his French-speaking parents, who supported his artistic ambitions since soon after his birth in Israel December 15, 1951.

Maimon has devoted the majority of his life pursing a career in the arts. He attended the Avni Institute of Fine Art in Tel Aviv, Israel’s most prestigious academy for the arts. This is where his initial interest in the Paris school was cultivated, and he truly began to adore the work of such famed French painters as Henri deToulouse-Lautrec and Henri Matisse. Maimon also found motivation in the work of his fellow Israelis, taking additional inspiration from painters Haim Kiva and Moshe Rosenthalis during his studies.

Maimons' art career continued as he developed his skill. In 1980, he started teaching at the School of Visual Arts in Beer-Sheeba and later that year the Kaye Art Academy. He was also a professor at the Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheeba in the late 1980s.

Maimons' second career as a restaurateur and pub owner also helped foster his artistic talents, as well. On breaks from tending bar and managing day-to-day operations of his business, he was often found sitting at a back table sketching the cafe patrons, interpreting the thoughts and feelings from their expressions and postures. He would sketch from life in the cafe and go back to the studio to put color to the ideas on canvas. His earlier interest in the Paris School and its artists’ fascination with France’s “boulevard culture” was again cultivated and nurtured. “I have always been attracted to the atmosphere of coffee houses,” he says. “I try to recreate this in my paintings.”

Collectors have become enraptured by Maimons' absorbing and rich work. His art is currently held in private and public collections and can be seen at art exhibitions and galleries throughout the world.

Maimon has matured through the years and he now feels  "this is the time to express what has always been inside me as an artist, not just to paint pretty paintings" as expressed in his new Expressionism paintings.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

About Heddy Kun



Heddy Kun is an Israeli painter was born in Zagreb in 1936. She lost her parents and younger brother, Eliezer, during the Holocaust. They were all killed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz. She escaped from the Nazis and hid in Budapest with her grandmother and her older brother, Shalom. After studying in the Budapest Academy of Art, she emigrated to Israel in 1956. Kun has had many exhibitions in Israel and in New York, and also in London, Budapest, Sydney, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Rome and Brussels. Her son is the Israeli-American painter Shay Kun.