[1] He used trade dress to protect his style from being emulated via Romm Art Creations Ltd. v. Simcha International, Inc.,[2] a case that Tarkay won.
At the age of 9, Tarkay and his family were sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp by the Nazis until Allied liberation freed them a year later.
[citation needed] Tarkay died in 2012 at the age of 77 in Detroit, where he visited as a guest of Park West Gallery.
In his later years, Tarkay mentored younger Israeli artists including David Najar, Yuval Wolfson and Mark Kanovich who often visited his studio, worked alongside him and received his critiques.
Tarkay's early works, some of which the Israeli art critic Joav BarEl classified as made in the De Staëlian style,[5] were completed by him personally.