Ariha, Avigdor

Born in southern Bukovina , in a Jewish German-speaking family. In 1941, the family was deported to Nazi concentration camps in Western Ukraine, his father died. He himself survived thanks to the drawings that he made during the deportation and which he was able to show to the representatives of the Red Cross who visited the camp in 1943 (in 1971 seven of them were facsimile published in Paris in limited edition). He and his sister were released and managed to move to Palestine in 1944 . Until 1948 he lived in a kibbutz in central Israel. In 1948 he was seriously wounded during the Arab-Israeli war , after the operation he spent several days in a coma. In 1946 - 1949, he attended the Bezalel Art Academy, where he studied under the guidance of Mordechai Ardon . In 1949 he received a scholarship, on which he went to study at the Paris School of Fine Arts , where he studied the technique of fresco painting. Since 1954, Ariha constantly lived in Paris, often came to Israel.

His wife is an American poetess and translator from the French Ann Etiik, they got married in 1961 . In 2001, she released a book of memoirs about Beckett How it was translated from English into several languages.

Ariha - the translation of the artist's family name ( wide, spacious ) into Aramaic. The artist took this new name after moving to Palestine.

Artist

In the late 1950s, he came to an abstract manner, but in the end he recognized this path as a dead end. In 1965, abandoned painting and was engaged exclusively in graphics. He returned to painting in 1973 , now combining figurativeness with minimalist elements of abstract art close to Mondrian in his portraits, nudes, and still lifes. He illustrated the books of Hemingway , Bialik , designed several books by Beckett, with whom he was friends until the writer's death; Beckett's note, addressed to Arich, was included in the catalog of the exhibition of drawings by the artist of 1965-1970-s.

Ariha is the author of several customized portraits ( Queen Elizabeth , 1983 ; Prime Minister of Great Britain , 1988 ; Catherine Deneuve , 1990 , Pierre Mauroy ).

Art Historian

He also acted as an art historian, he owns a monograph on drawings by Ingres ( 1986 ), a collection of articles and speeches Painting and Glance ( 1991 , reprint 1994 ), On Image ( 1995 , in English), an essay on painting, prefaces to catalogs the works of Poussin and others. He gave lectures at Princeton and Yale , the Frick collection , the Prado Museum, and others.

In 2006–2007 , a large retrospective of Ariha’s works from 1965–2005 was deployed in the British Museum . In June-September 2008, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid showed a retrospective exhibition of his works.

Commander of the Legion of Honor ( 2005 ). Honorary Doctor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem .

• Arikha Paris: Hermann; London: Thames and Hudson, 1985
• Thomson D. Arikha . London: Phaidon, 1994
• Ferrando M., Schwarz A. Avigdor Arikha . Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 2001
• Avigdor Arikha: From Life - Drawings and Prints, 1965—2005 / Ed. by Stephen Coppel, Duncan Thomson. London: British Museum Press, 2006
• Beckett S. Avigdor Arich // He. Fragments: Essays, reviews, critical articles. M .: Text, 2009, p.183

• Works in the museums of the world
• Exhibition at the British Museum
• Biography, works on line (eng.)
• Biography, video (eng.)
• Biography, interview, 2009 (eng.)
• Works on line (eng.)
• Bibliography of works about the artist