Visual arts in Israel

In the logo of the quarterly magazine "Yalkut Bezalel", designed by Ze'ev Raban, we see within the ornate frame cherubs with a painter and a sculptor on each side and a lamp maker and a rug weaver next to them.

Among the principal works Ohannessian created in Jerusalem were: tiles for the American Colony Hotel (1923), the fountain base for Saint John Eye Hospital Group, the domed entry of the Rockefeller Museum, etc.

The artists Megherdich Karakashian and Neshan Balian, who in 1922 left Ohannessian's studio and founded a joint workshop, developed an independent style in which figurative images foreign to traditional Turkish art appeared.

Students that learned in the Tel Aviv studio include David Hendler, Ori Reisman, Yechezkel Streichman, Arie Aroch, Shimshon Holzman, Mordechai Levanon, Joseph Kossonogi, Genia Berger and others.

[26] Art focused extensively on Tel Aviv and its bohemian café culture, on nudes, people in European middle class attire; in stark difference to the agricultural pioneer image.

This symbolic message in content and form appears also in the works of artists of the Land of Israel group, such as Moses Sternschuss, Rafael Chamizer, Moshe Ziffer, Joseph Constant (Constantinovsky), and Dov Feigin, most of whom studied at some point in France.

Artists such as Zoltan Kluger, Yaakov (Jack) Rosner, and others, documented the Zionist enterprise and the Jewish settlement, sometimes using photographic angles, compositions, and views which took their inspiration from Soviet Communism in Russia.

Among the photographers who worked in a more artistic tradition were Richard Levy (Ereel), who created photomontages of semi-abstract figures; Tim (Nahum) Gidal, and the sisters Charlotte and Gerda Meyer, who specialized in architectural photography.

[33] In 1943 the Israeli poet Yonatan Ratosh (1908–1981) published "Epistle to Hebrew Youth", the proclamation, the manifesto, the first written communication of "The Canaanites", a literary and artistic movement that had been active for some time.

Danziger opened a sculpture studio in the yard of his father's hospital in Tel Aviv, and there he critiqued and taught young sculptors such as Benjamin Tammuz, Kosso Eloul, Yechiel Shemi, Mordechai Gumpel, etc.

[4][42] Frenkel Frenel, Rolly Sheffer and other Israeli and Jewish artists were heavily inspired by the stunning panoramas and views that Tzfat offered them of Mt Meron, something that is very visible in their work.

Among the artists showing were Pinchas Abramovich, Marcel Janco, Aharon Kahana, Yohanan Simon, Avshalom Okashi and Moshe Castel, as well as movement founders Zaritsky, Streichman and Feigin.

Marcel Janco, of international fame for his involvement in the Dada movement in Europe in the 1930s, did not adopt this approach to abstraction; rather his art uses European Cubist and Expressionist styles to create a Jewish-Zionist narrative.

[55] Artists like Simon Zabar, Moshe Gat, and Ruth Schloss created works that reflected national social tensions, a clearly socialist political slant, and glorification of the worker.

Sculptor Dov Feigin produced "Wheat Sheaves" in 1956, and Dadaist Janco painted "Soldiers", "Air raid Alarms" and "Maabarot" (jerry-built communities housing new Jewish immigrants in the 1950s).

For example, his painting "Gate of Light" (1953), shows the tree of life, a symbol of great Biblical and Kabbalistic meaning, within a surrealistic landscape reminiscent of the work of Paul Klee and others.

Ever since, surrealism has played a significant role in Israeli art, and some of its most gifted and influential proponents include artists like Zeev Kun, Samuel Bak, Baruch Elron, Joel Tal-Mor, as well as Yosl Bergner.

Moshe Kupferman, who had studied painting with Chaim Atar (Aptaker), Zaritsky, Alexander Bogen and others developed an identifiable style characterized by reduced use of color, and by a process of erasing and wiping the drawing over and over until it formed an expressive grid.

His sculpture "Take Me Under Your Wings"(1964–65) (the first line in the well-known poem by Hayyim Nahman Bialik), for example, Tumarkin created a sort of steel casing with rifle barrels sticking out of it.

Since it ostensibly lacked a clear ideology, the group focused on organizing a series of exhibits in galleries that tried to emphasize the idea of the blurring of distinctions between different kinds of media in contemporary art.

The theoretical underpinning of this group was established by the curator Sara Breitberg-Semel, in the exhibit "The Want of Matter: A Quality in Israeli Art", which took place in March 1986 in the Tel Aviv Museum.

Another element, which in Breitberg-Semel's opinion was no less central, was the "non-aesthetic" approach, the roots of which could allegedly be found in the Jewish tradition of talmudic studies, which places text, and not form, at the center of culture.

The works of their followers, Aviva Uri and Arie Aroch, used a national aesthetic model called "The Want of Matter", using materials in their art that were compatible with their ascetic outlook and combining abstraction with an implied iconography.

Over the years the image of Raffi Lavie himself, dressed in sloppy short pants and rubber flip-flops, intentionally "native" and "Sabra" in his appearance, was displayed as the expression of this problematic aesthetic approach.

Conceptual Post-Minimalist Installation artists Avital Geva, Joshua Neustein, Micha Ullman, Buky Schwartz, Benni Efrat, Zvi Goldstein, Yocheved Weinfeld, Adina Bar-On, Nahum Tevet, Or Ner, Michael Gitlin, Pinchas Cohen Gan discarded the conventions of taste, the heroics of authenticity, and provincial narrative.

He transformed drawing into a three-dimensional practice Yigal Zalmona, Josef Maschek, Robert Pincus Witten and other international critics called that type of art "epistemic abstraction".

This concept was implemented by using the ideas behind Bedouin and Palestinian ritual sites throughout the Land of Israel, sites in which trees are used alongside the graves of revered leaders as a ritual focus and, in Danziger's words, "bright swatches of cloth in blue and green are hung from the branches […] Driven by a spiritual need, people come to hang these pieces of fabric on the branches and to make a wish"[83] In 1972 a group of young artists who were in touch with Danziger and influenced by his ideas created a group of activities that became known as "Metzer-Messer" in the area between Kibbutz Metzer and the Arab village Meiser in the north west section of the Shomron.

Like Danziger, Tumarkin also related in these works to the life forms of popular culture, particularly in Arab and Bedouin villages, and created from them a sort of artistic-morphological language, using "impoverished" bricolage methods.

A large number of artists returned from studying photography in the United States, among them Avi Ganor, Oded Yedaya, Yigal Shem Tov, Simcha Shirman, Deganit Berest, etc.

In works such as "Temple Mount" (1995) or "Country" (2002), Sigalit Landau created environments rich in objects with an expressive appearance that reflected her interest in transitional situations and in social-political criticism.