Bidspirit auction | ARIKHA, AVIGDOR

ARIKHA, AVIGDOR - Adam and Eve.. Oil on canvas. Signed by the artist in Hebrew and English and dated lower left. Framed. 23.5 x 19 inches; 59.5 x 48.5 cm. 1956. Raised in Bukovina, Arikha and his family were deported to the Romanian-run concentration camps of Transnistria where his father died. In 1944 safety was found in British-Mandate Palestine although Arikha was severely wounded fighting in Israel's War of Independence. In 1949 he attended the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem, after which Arikha won a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, a city he settled in permanently from 1954. It was in Paris that Arikha developed close and lengthy friendships with such luminaries as the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. An abstract-turned-realist artist, Arikha uses a minimal number of tones to express shade and texture and the intrinsic attempt to capture the spirit of the subject matter. His work is reminiscent of other abstract-expressionists such as Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky.       Provenance: Acquired from the Arta Gallery, Jerusalem.