Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem |
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Yossef Zaritsky
Israeli (born Ukraine), 1891–1985 The Painter and the Model Oil on sackcloth 162 x 130 cm Purchase, the 50th Anniversary Fund in honor of Issachar Haimovic, established by the American-Israeli Paper Mills, Ltd. © Etia Illief Zaritsky, Tel Aviv Accession number: B74.0036 |
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Zaritsky was one of the most influential figures in Israeli art. His dominant personality and painting talent gained him the respect and admiration of three generations of Israeli artists, from his contemporaries on, who have helped forge the history of art in Israel. Zaritsky aimed to instill Modernist norms and modes of expression in Israeli art. His personal idiom blended the international art style with the influence of the light and climatic conditions of the Land of Israel. The lyrical abstract style of the New Horizons group, of which he was a founding member, emphasized the artist's expression of the human experience through painterly - formal and chromatic - rather than narrative elements.
The Painter and the Model belongs to a group of works Zaritsky made while giving art seminars in Kibbutz Na'an between 1949 and 1952. The figure of the artist is reduced to an abstract, bifurcated stick topped by a round form that is reminiscent of a lightbulb surrounded by a halo of light. It stands in front |
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