Yona Fischer

During the Second World War he, together with his brother, joined his father in Sidon and then in Beirut, where he studied at the "Alliance" schools.

Before becoming a curator, Yona Fischer used to draw, mostly in ink, small landscape sketches that documented his travels.

On the 90th anniversary of his birth, some of his drawings were shown in an exhibition at the Kufeferman Collection House, curated by Mayra Perry-Lehmann.

At the same time, he began writing lists and art reviews in the newspapers "LaMerhav" and "Haaretz", as well as the magazine "Gazit[2]".

He first interned with Willem Sandberg and Hans Jaffé at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and then at the Kunstmuseum in Basel with Georg Schmidt.

[3] In his work as a museum curator he introduced young Israeli artists such as Aviva Uri, Yigal Tomarkin, Lea Nikel and others.

Fischer's main museological importance was in establishing the post-minimalist and conceptual art trends in Israel.

Among the international artists were solo exhibitions such as "Marcel Duchamp: Ready-Mades, Drawings, Illustrations" (1971), "4,000 Pots by Jean Pierre Reno" (1971), "Sol LeWitt: Murals" (1975) and more.

In 1965 he, together with Rachel Shapira, Moshe Spitzer's secretary, and Dan Omer, also founded the magazine "Ko", which operated until 1970.

Among his actions at the museum was obtaining the donation of the art collection of the couple Markus Mizne and Felicja Blumental.

In 2018, for example, a translation of a diary written by his grandfather, Jean (Yona) Fischer, after his visit to Israel in 1907 was published.

Fischer, who initiated the translation, donated a copy of the original edition of this text to Yad Ben Zvi.

The collection that bears his name was donated by him in 2015 to the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, including works by Aviva Uri and Menashe Kadishman.

On January 4, 2019, the exhibition "Long Lion: The Shape of the Thing" opened at the Israel Museum, which Fischer curated with Amitai Mendelsohn.

Fisher's inclination towards experimental art led him to be one of the main factors in promoting this trend in Israel.

The early influence can be found in the presentation of the various stages of the "Eagle Quarry Restoration Project" (1971) by Yitzhak Danziger at the Israel Museum.

These brought Danziger closer to a number of young artists such as Avital Geva, Micah Ullman, Moshe Gershoni and others.

"The conversation between Fisher and Arie Aroch", wrote Shva Salhoov, "creates a story that is linked to and has been made into art since the seventies".

In this regard, works such as the "Zakfar" series (1961-1966), and the discussion that led to the concept of "abstract-concrete" developed by Aroch, as well as the painting "High Commissioner" (1964) and "Agrippa Street" (1964), and the transformation of the "common image " in which to a "form" that detaches itself from literary and biographical contexts, constitute a peak in the formation of this perception.

[10] Template: check quote This perception also permeated Fischer's view of modern painting, especially regarding the work of Moshe Kupferman.

This view, which places "language" at its centre, had to deal repeatedly, as Fischer himself testified, with the prevailing tendency to try to identify figurative elements in Kupferman's work.