- Avigdor Arikha
Avigdor Arikha (born
April 28 ,1929 ) is anIsraeli and French painter,printmaker , and art historian.Life and work
Avigdor Arikha was born to German-speaking parents in
Rădăuţi , nearCzernowitz , in what was then calledBukovina , and is today inRomania . ("SeeRomania during World War II ") His family faced forced deportation in 1941 to theconcentration 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 theInternational 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 HahamishahKibbutz . In 1948 he was severely wounded inIsrael's War of Independence . From 1946 to 1949, he attended the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts inJerusalem ; its teaching was based on theBauhaus methods. In 1949 he was awarded a scholarship which enabled him to study at theEcole des Beaux Arts inParis , where he learned thefresco 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 ofMondrian . He has also illustrated some of the texts ofSamuel 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 theUnited Kingdom (1988), both in the collection of theScottish National Portrait Gallery ,Edinburgh . Other portraits include those ofCatherine Deneuve (1990) for the French State, or that of the former Prime MinisterPierre Mauroy for the city ofLille .As an art historian, Arikha has written catalogues for exhibitions on
Poussin and Ingres for which he was curator at theMusée du Louvre , theFrick Collection of New York, theMuseum of Fine Arts, Houston , and theIsrael 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 theNew York Review of Books ,The New Republic ,Commentaire ,Literary Imagination , etc. He has also lectured widely, atPrinceton University , atYale University , at theFrick Collection in New York, at thePrado Museum inMadrid , and at many other venues. Most recently, he was invited by theThyssen-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 onSamuel 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]
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