Avner Katz: “I Have Already Been”

The creativity of Avner Katz (1939–2020) rested firmly on three pillars: illustration, painting, and writing. And each one supported the other, adding to the remarkable diversity of Katz’s distinctive work. The exhibition presents self-portraits that feature text and image in varying doses. Seen together, they enrich our understanding of the man and his unusual art: a writer who painted pictures and a painter who wrote metaphors.

In these very personal paintings, drawings, and illustrations, Katz – a storyteller to the depth of his soul – offers humorous, ironic statements through clever counterpoints of word and picture.

At the heart of the exhibition is a series of daily self-portraits that Katz created over a year as he approached his 80th birthday. These are sober appraisals in which he scrutinized himself, old age, and the transience of life. Each portrait contributes to an epic creation, a new summit in his artistic journey. Avner Katz died a year and a half after completing the series, which now stands as a visual chronicle of a life lived and a death foretold.