Page 48 - Studio International - March 1972

New trends

among young
Israeli artists

Yona Fischer

The geographical and political isolation of Raffi Lavie
hackie Galil 1968
Israel is well-known, and it would not be Collage and acrylic
over-bold to conclude that the country must 2 Yagel Tumarkin
also be culturally isolated. If I were to ask, in Arad Observation Point 1962-68
London, for example: 'What do you know i6 x tom.
about artists in Israel today, and is there in fact 3 Ami Shavit
any artistic activity there ?' I would probably Object
be answered: 'Nothing, though we suppose that 4 Scrap heap in Jerusalem
there are artists in Israel.' 5 Israel Hadany
The conditions which have provided a Sculpture 1969
background and basis for the evolution of
artistic creativity in Israel over the past decade
are totally different from those which exist in
Europe and America. An Israeli leaving the
boundaries of his country for the first time
—whether an artist or someone interested in
art—often first discovers what he had already
come across here and there in the few art
journals reaching him from England, the
United States or Germany. But the crucial
discovery is of another kind: he comes face to
face with the simultaneous existence of the most
divergent interpretations of the creative
concept. He sees what is after all a peaceful
co-existence between contradictory conceptions,
styles and means of expression. He senses what
is for him decisive, that the geographic origins
and the social and political backgrounds of
artists are usually no more than a starting-point
for creative production whose validity will be
assessed on the strength of its ability to break
away from origins (or the assumptions connected
with them) and become influential by virtue of
its mobility—by the very fact of its physical
presence in different centres at the same time.
He sees this element of mutual stimulation,
which is directly connected with the mobility of
works and of artists, as an essential condition