Ivan Schwebel, Hand Painted Lithograph "Tel Aviv Dragon Slayer" Israeli American Bezalel School, 1975

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Artist: Schwebel, Ivan (Israeli 1932 - 2011) Title: Tel Aviv Dragon Slayer Dimensions: 22.5 x 30 inches Signature: signed and … Read more Artist: Schwebel, Ivan (Israeli 1932 - 2011) Title: Tel Aviv Dragon Slayer Dimensions: 22.5 x 30 inches Signature: signed and dated Schwebel 75 lower Right Corner Ivan Schwebel, Painter. Was born 1932, U.S.A. and immigrated to Israel 1963 after living in Spain, France and Greece. Studies: 1953-55 with Kimura Kyoen whilst serving with the U.S.Army in Japan; 1955-61 Institute of Fine Arts, with Philip Guston; New York University. Larry Abramson, who is very much in the mainstream of Israeli art, curated an exhibition of Schwebel’s work at the Jerusalem Print Workshop in the early 1980s; in the accompanying text, he described him as “an artist from the New York School ship-wrecked on a hill near Jerusalem.” IN SCHWEBEL’S BEST WORK, THE paint speaks for itself: the pools and explosions of rich color, achieved with pigment that he would grind and mix himself, the luminous figures emerging out of dark shadows, the quirky, dramatic compositions. Schwebel was erudite, with a passion for the bible and Jewish and Israeli history. He delved into all of it for his subject matter, bringing together characters and narratives regardless of time, and setting them in modern- day Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, the Judean hills, or New York City. He liked to play with ideas, and thoroughly mixed his visual metaphors. He showed David and Bat-Sheva next to a Nazi deportation train, and Job despairing over his relationship with the Palestinians. He based his characters on photographs of himself, friends and family, or movie stars. On his website, he describes a series of paintings about anti-Semitism in which the Holocaust is merged with the Spanish Inquisition: “Abarbanel who tried to negotiate with Ferdinand and Isabella is reincarnated in Rumkovski – the German appointed Head of the Lodz Ghetto. The bridge connecting two parts of the Ghetto is spanned over a present-day Tel Aviv cityscape. His “Tel Aviv” series, in contast, is fun: “Chen Cinema” shows a couple of actors who seem to have stepped out of an old romantic movie to cuddle in the shabby street outside the cinema. In his final “Safe Place” series of paintings, he goes beyond self-conscious narrative to create his own Garden of Eden. He had major shows over the years – at the Israel Museum and Tefen, and last year at the Ramat Gan Museum; his work had been exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum and is represented in their collection. Retrospective 1966-1980 Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv. Artists: Yehiel Shemi, Zvi Mairovich, Yosef Zaritsky, Ivan Schwebel, Benni Efrat, Leopold Krakauer, Moshe Kupferman, Avigdor Arikha, Dani Karavan, Avigdor Stematsky,Michael Druks, Raffi Lavie, Aviva Uri, Lea Nikel, Igael Tumarkin, Uri Lifschitz. Trends in Israeli Art 1970-1990 International Art Fair, Art Basel, Switzerland. Artists: Anna Ticho, Menashe Kadishman, Yitzhak Danziger, Ivan Schwebel, Motti Mizrachi, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Lea Nikel, Moshe Gershuni, Buky Schwartz. See less