Avigdor Arikha

Avigdor Arikha

Avigdor Arikha (born April 28, 1929) is an Israeli and French painter, printmaker, and art historian.

Life and work

Avigdor Arikha was born to German-speaking parents in Rădăuţi, near Czernowitz, in what was then called Bukovina, and is today in Romania. ("See Romania during World War II") His family faced forced deportation in 1941 to the concentration camps of Western Ukraine, where his father died. He managed to survive thanks to the drawings he made of deportation scenes, which were shown to delegates of the International Red Cross. As a result of that, both he and his sister were freed and brought to Palestine in 1944. Between 1944 and 1948, he was in the Ma'aleh Hahamishah Kibbutz. In 1948 he was severely wounded in Israel's War of Independence. From 1946 to 1949, he attended the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem; its teaching was based on the Bauhaus methods. In 1949 he was awarded a scholarship which enabled him to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he learned the fresco technique. Since 1954, Arikha has continuously resided in Paris.

In the late 1950s, Arikha evolved into abstraction and established himself as an abstract painter, but he eventually came to think of abstraction as a dead end. In 1965 he stopped painting and began drawing, only from life, treating all subjects in a single sitting. Continuing on this path for the next eight years, his activity was confined to drawing and printmaking until late 1973, when he felt an urge to resume painting. His practice has remained to paint directly from the subject, using no preliminary drawing, finishing a painting, pastel, print, ink or drawing in one session. He is noted for his portraits, nudes, still lives, and landscapes, rendered realistically and spontaneously, but clearly bearing the lessons of abstraction, and in particular of Mondrian. He has also illustrated some of the texts of Samuel Beckett, with whom he maintained a close friendship until the writer's death.

Arikha has painted a number of commissioned portraits, including that of H.M. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (1983), Lord Home of the Hirsel, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1988), both in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Other portraits include those of Catherine Deneuve (1990) for the French State, or that of the former Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy for the city of Lille.

As an art historian, Arikha has written catalogues for exhibitions on Poussin and Ingres for which he was curator at the Musée du Louvre, the Frick Collection of New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Israel Museum Jerusalem. His writings include "Ingres, Fifty Life Drawings" (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston/Frick Collection, New York, 1986); "Peinture et Regard" (Paris: Hermann, 1991, 1994); "On Depiction" (London: Bellew Publishing, 1995); and numerous essays published in the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Commentaire, Literary Imagination, etc. He has also lectured widely, at Princeton University, at Yale University, at the Frick Collection in New York, at the Prado Museum in Madrid, and at many other venues. Most recently, he was invited by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid to select a number of works from its collection and to write the entries for the catalogue accompanying the resulting exhibition.

From July 2006-January 2007 there was an exhibition at the British Museum of Arikha's bequest to it of one hundred prints and drawings.

From June to September 2008 the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid hosted a major retrospective exhibition of the artist. An exclusive preview was published in "Standpoint" [http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001816.php]

Arikha has been married since 1961 to the American poet and writer Anne Atik, most recently author of a memoir on Samuel Beckett.

Books on Arikha

Besides the many exhibition catalogues published by his gallery, Marlborough Gallery, these include:

* "Arikha", by Samuel Beckett, Robert Hughes, André Fermigier(et al) (Paris: Hermann; London: Thames and Hudson, 1985)
* "Arikha", by Duncan Thomson (London: Phaidon, 1994)
* "Avigdor Arikha", by Monica Ferrando and Arturo Schwarz (Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 2001)
* "Avigdor Arikha: From Life - Drawings and Prints, 1965-2005", by Stephen Coppel and Duncan Thomson (London: British Museum Press, 2006), published to accompany their 2006-7 exhibition.

ee also

* [http://www.engel-art.co.il/artists.php?act=show&id=1059 Original works by Avigdor Arikha at the Engel Gallery]
* [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/arikha_avigdor.html Arikha Online]
* [http://www.britishmuseum.co.uk/Product.aspx?ID=1134 The British Museum - Avigdor Arikha]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Avigdor Arikha — Saltar a navegación, búsqueda Avigdor Arikha (n. el 28 de abril de 1929) es un pintor, grabador e historiador del arte franco israelí. Contenido 1 Primeros años 2 Carrera artística 3 …   Wikipedia Español

  • Avigdor Arikha — Avigdor Arikha.jpg Avigdor Arikha est un peintre et graveur israélien et français né en Bukovine le 28 avril 1929, mort le 29 avril 2010 à Paris Il fait don en 2008 d un grand nombre de ses estampes à la Bibliothèque nationale …   Wikipédia en Français

  • ARIKHA, AVIGDOR — (1929– ), Israeli painter. Arikha was born in Redauts, Bukovina, the second child of Haim Karl and Perla Dlugacz. He discovered the power of his art in 1944, when his drawing ability helped get him released from a Romanian concentration camp,… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Avigdor (name) — Avigdor ( he. אביגדור, also Abigdor, Awigdor ) is Hebrew given name. Figdor, Viktor, Victor are Europeanised forms. Avigdora is the female form.Given names*Avigdor Arikha *Abigdor Cohen ben Elijah of Vienna *Avigdor Dagan *Avigdor Eskin *Avigdor… …   Wikipedia

  • Avigdor (disambiguation) — Avigdor is a moshav in Israel.Avigdor may also refer to:*Avigdor (name), a Hebrew name *Avigdor Arikha, Israeli French painter, printmaker, and art historian *Abigdor Cohen of Vienna (c. 13th century), Austrian Talmudist *Avigdor Dagan (1912… …   Wikipedia

  • Ариха — Ариха, Авигдор Авигдор Ариха (фр. Avigdor Arikha, собственно Авигдор Длугач, 28 апреля 1929, Рэдэуци  29 апреля 2010, Париж)  израильский и французский живописец, график, книжный оформитель. Содержание 1 Биография 2 …   Википедия

  • Ариха, Авигдор — Авигдор Ариха (фр. Avigdor Arikha, собственно Авигдор Длугач, 28 апреля 1929, Рэдэуци  29 апреля 2010, Париж)  израильский и французский живописец, график, книжный оформитель. Содержание 1 Биография …   Википедия

  • Samuel Beckett — Infobox Writer name = Samuel Beckett caption = Louis le Brocquy, Image of Samuel Beckett (detail), 1979, oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm pseudonym = Andrew Belis ( Recent Irish Poetry ) [ [http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/online/beckett/career/begi… …   Wikipedia

  • Samuel Beckett — Saltar a navegación, búsqueda Samuel Beckett …   Wikipedia Español

  • List of painters by name — The following list of painters by name includes nearly 1,900 painters from all ages and parts of the world. A*Pacita Abad (1946–2004) *Herb Aach (1923–1985) *Hans von Aachen (1552–1615) *Riza Abbasi (1565–1635) *Giuseppe Abbati (1836–1868) *Mary… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”