Avigdor Arikha (April 28, 1929 – April 29, 2010) was a Romanian-born French–Israeli painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and art historian.
Avigdor Arikha (originally Victor Długacz) was born to German-speaking Jewish parents in Rădăuţi, but grew up in Czernowitz in Bukovina, Romania (now in Ukraine). His family faced forced deportation in 1941 to the Romanian-run concentration camps of Transnistria, where his father died. He survived thanks to the drawings he made of deportation scenes, which were shown to delegates of the International Red Cross.
Arikha emigrated to Palestine in 1944, together with his sister. Until 1948, he lived in Kibbutz Ma’ale HaHamisha. In 1948 he was severely wounded in Israel’s War of Independence. From 1946 to 1949, he attended the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem. In 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he learned the fresco technique. From 1954, Arikha resided in Paris. Arikha was married from 1961 until his death to the American poet and writer Anne Atik, with whom he had two daughters. Arikha died in Paris on April 29, 2010, the day after his 81st birthday.
Avigdor Arikha Abstract composition 1966 oil on canvas 113 x 146 cm
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. He became “perhaps the best painter from life in the last decades of the 20th century”, in the words of the obituary in the Economist magazine. His practice thereafter remained to paint directly from the subject in natural light only, using no preliminary drawing, finishing a painting, pastel, print, ink, or drawing in one session. His profound knowledge of art techniques and his masterly draughtsmanship enabled him to abide until the very end of his life by this principle of immediacy, partly inspired by Chinese brush painting. It was a principle he shared with his close friend Henri Cartier-Bresson, to whose “instant décisif” it was analogous. He drew and painted exclusively from life, never from memory or photograph, aiming to depict the truth of what lay before his eyes, at that moment. He is noted for his portraits, nudes, still lifes, and landscapes, rendered realistically and spontaneously, but in their radical spatial composition they clearly bear the lessons of abstraction, and in particular of Mondrian. He also illustrated some of the texts of Samuel Beckett, with whom he maintained a close friendship until the writer’s death.
Samuel Beckett in Profile, 1970
In the words of the art critic Marco Livingstone, Arikha “bridged the modernist avant-garde of pure abstraction with traditions of observational drawing and painting stretching back to the Renaissance and beyond. He was truculently insistent that he was not part of any ‘return to figuration’, but rather had found his own way as ‘a post-abstract representational artist’.” – Wikiart
19711973
Anne in Shawl and Dark Glasses, 1979
1965 Brush and sumi ink on rag paper mounted on silk
“The breakaway from abstraction happened in March 1965 and drawing from observation replaced painting from imagination. The principal tool, however, the brush, remained. It was in this case a flat Japanese brush. It is used here with sumi ink, used sparingly, so as to bring the whites to the fore” – Arikha’s e-mailed comment to Felicity Kerr
1970197319701979
Every artist knows the faces you make when you’re concentrating hard on a self portrait….
[image_with_animation image_url=”11238″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] This last year, Seattle Refined highlighted both Nikki Barber and myself, Ruthie V. Now they’ve discovered Angie Dixon. KOMO said they look at the Seattle Artist League website to find artists for their ongoing “Seattle Refined; Artist of the Week.” (Thanks KOMO!) This week Angie Dixon receives highlights for …
Yesterday I made a post about tracking viewer’s eye movements on a painting. Today I have the reverse: Graham Fink stairs at a blank screen, and the eye tracking software draws the picture as he moves his eyes.
I used to view digital paintings as inferior to “real” paintings, requiring less skill. I’ve since come to realize the skill of digital work is no less challenging, and the medium can be every bit as sincere. Digital paintings require the artist to mix and apply specific color, value, texture, layers, and transparency – all …
Ruthie V. Some Pretty Paintings A collection of figures and flowers in paintings and prints Artist talk Saturday at 3:30pm (TODAY!) yak yak yak yak juxtaposition yak yak yak sexy flowers yak yak yak Opening Reception to follow 5:00-7:00pm Show open through January 27, 2019 Smith & Vallee Gallery 5742 Gilkey Ave, Edison (360) 766-6230 Open Daily …
The Drawings of Avigdor Arikha
A Post-Abstract Representational Artist
From Wikiart:
Avigdor Arikha (April 28, 1929 – April 29, 2010) was a Romanian-born French–Israeli painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and art historian.
Avigdor Arikha (originally Victor Długacz) was born to German-speaking Jewish parents in Rădăuţi, but grew up in Czernowitz in Bukovina, Romania (now in Ukraine). His family faced forced deportation in 1941 to the Romanian-run concentration camps of Transnistria, where his father died. He survived thanks to the drawings he made of deportation scenes, which were shown to delegates of the International Red Cross.
Arikha emigrated to Palestine in 1944, together with his sister. Until 1948, he lived in Kibbutz Ma’ale HaHamisha. In 1948 he was severely wounded in Israel’s War of Independence. From 1946 to 1949, he attended the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem. In 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he learned the fresco technique. From 1954, Arikha resided in Paris. Arikha was married from 1961 until his death to the American poet and writer Anne Atik, with whom he had two daughters. Arikha died in Paris on April 29, 2010, the day after his 81st birthday.
Abstract composition 1966
oil on canvas 113 x 146 cm
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. He became “perhaps the best painter from life in the last decades of the 20th century”, in the words of the obituary in the Economist magazine. His practice thereafter remained to paint directly from the subject in natural light only, using no preliminary drawing, finishing a painting, pastel, print, ink, or drawing in one session. His profound knowledge of art techniques and his masterly draughtsmanship enabled him to abide until the very end of his life by this principle of immediacy, partly inspired by Chinese brush painting. It was a principle he shared with his close friend Henri Cartier-Bresson, to whose “instant décisif” it was analogous. He drew and painted exclusively from life, never from memory or photograph, aiming to depict the truth of what lay before his eyes, at that moment. He is noted for his portraits, nudes, still lifes, and landscapes, rendered realistically and spontaneously, but in their radical spatial composition they clearly bear the lessons of abstraction, and in particular of Mondrian. He also illustrated some of the texts of Samuel Beckett, with whom he maintained a close friendship until the writer’s death.
In the words of the art critic Marco Livingstone, Arikha “bridged the modernist avant-garde of pure abstraction with traditions of observational drawing and painting stretching back to the Renaissance and beyond. He was truculently insistent that he was not part of any ‘return to figuration’, but rather had found his own way as ‘a post-abstract representational artist’.” – Wikiart
Brush and sumi ink on rag paper mounted on silk
“The breakaway from abstraction happened in March 1965 and drawing from observation replaced painting from imagination. The principal tool, however, the brush, remained. It was in this case a flat Japanese brush. It is used here with sumi ink, used sparingly, so as to bring the whites to the fore” – Arikha’s e-mailed comment to Felicity Kerr
Every artist knows the faces you make when you’re concentrating hard on a self portrait….
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