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Modern Israeli painting begins with the 1920s wave (Reuven Rubin, Anna Ticho, Nachum Gutman) painting the Mediterranean light of a young Tel Aviv, moves through the New Horizons (Ofakim Hadashim) modernist break of 1948 (Zaritsky, Streichman, Stematsky), absorbs the German-Jewish exiles (Ardon), and reaches contemporary figures (Yair Garbuz, Tsibi Geva, Michal Heiman). This lesson walks the canon, names, dates, signatures, and where to see the work.
Cultural note, The "Want of Matter" (Dalut Hachomer) was the Israeli answer to American Pop and European Arte Povera in the 1960s-70s, using cardboard, plywood, jute, broken concrete. Raffi Lavie was its champion. When you see a painting in Tel Aviv that looks like a deliberately ugly children\'s collage with Hebrew letters, you\'re looking at a Lavie or his school. It is not "bad painting", it is a defining national aesthetic.
1920s Founding Generation
New Horizons (Ofakim Hadashim) 1948
Want of Matter & Raffi Lavie School
Contemporary Painters
Vocabulary of the Painter
A Walk Through the Tel Aviv Museum's Israeli Collection
A short reading mapping a visitor\'s walk through the second floor of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where the Israeli canon hangs.