Arikha

Fülszöveg

Avigdor Arikha (b. 1929) is one of the most independent/ minded artists of our time. In 1965, at the height of a successful career as an abstract painter in Paris and New York, he sud/ denly stopped painting to return to drawing from life in order to assuage a 'violent hunger in the eye' released by his experience of the great Caravaggio exhibition of that year. When he returned to painting in 1973 it was to begin on the series of intensely observed portraits, nudes and still lifes for which he is now known world/ wide; this work was extolled as, 'supremely honest, unrhetorical painting, it breathes the air of scrupulous anxiety. He has a surer sense of tone — the equivalent of natural pitch — than anyone painting today' (Robert Hughes, Time, 30 July 1979)-His intimate still lifes include such 'local' subjects as a bundle of asparagus, a corner of his Paris studio and the books on his library shelves. His portraits range from informal studies of his close friends the playwright... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Avigdor Arikha (b. 1929) is one of the most independent/ minded artists of our time. In 1965, at the height of a successful career as an abstract painter in Paris and New York, he sud/ denly stopped painting to return to drawing from life in order to assuage a 'violent hunger in the eye' released by his experience of the great Caravaggio exhibition of that year. When he returned to painting in 1973 it was to begin on the series of intensely observed portraits, nudes and still lifes for which he is now known world/ wide; this work was extolled as, 'supremely honest, unrhetorical painting, it breathes the air of scrupulous anxiety. He has a surer sense of tone — the equivalent of natural pitch — than anyone painting today' (Robert Hughes, Time, 30 July 1979)-His intimate still lifes include such 'local' subjects as a bundle of asparagus, a corner of his Paris studio and the books on his library shelves. His portraits range from informal studies of his close friends the playwright Samuel Beckett and the photographer Henri Cartier/Bresson to striking portrayals of public figures, among them the former British Prime Minister Lord Home and the Queen Mother. This book, partly based on discussions with the artist over a long period, surveys Arikha's entire career and shows his work from the drawings he made as a child in a Nazi concentration camp to the passionately observed and beautifully composed paintings of the 1990s. In addition to painting Arikha has written many essays (now collected in one volume), curated exhibitions (at the Louvre and the Frick among others), made television films on artists such as Velázquez, Poussin and David, and lectured on art at numerous institutions. He now divides his time between Paris and Jerusalem. Vissza