Avi Schwartz - playing in Jaffa.

Artist name: Avi Schwartz

Name of the ...

Avi Schwartz - playing in Jaffa.

Artist name: Avi Schwartz

Name of the piece: Beach

Technique: oil on mesonite

Details: signed and framed

Dimensions including frame: 54x46 cm.

without 44x36 cm.

About the artist:

Avi Shortz was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1938, to a diamond family. He absorbed the values of art in the house whose walls were decorated with paintings from his father's rich collection.

In 1947, the family managed to leave Romania and reach Israel via Paris at the end of 1948. Here they were received by his grandfather, Moshe Josephson, the first president of the Israeli Diamond Exchange, who immigrated to Israel before the war. As a teenager, my father studied at "Salva High School" in Tel Aviv, and under the influence of his parents, he enrolled at the Avni Institute. He was the youngest student there, and was proud of the fact that he passed the entrance exams with great success. The Avni Institute of those days was run by Moshe Mokdi, and his teachers included Yehezkel Streichman, Avigdor Stimatsky and Marcel Janko.

At that time, the artistic concepts that prevailed in Avni tended towards abstract art and the search for a new, international modernist language, which opposes the "old Bezalel art", the "paintings of the tourists" and the realistic painting that came to imitate the visible. Avi was exposed at the Avni Institute to abstract expressionism, and to an approach that advocates painting as an intuitive means of expressing feelings, as a reflection of fantasy, the subconscious, etc. According to this reference, the realistic painting reached its maximum, and therefore reached its end. The learning process at the institute is done with basic and initial instruction during class, and with a lot of work at home. A kind of learning by trial and error, and reviewing works in class. Shortz was not connected to these events. The painting language of Stimatsky or Streichman and Winko, who belonged to the "New Horizons" group, did not suit him, and he was looking for the "real thing" for him, the figurative painting. The miscommunication between him and his teachers led to a "dry period" in which he stopped painting.

When the Sinai War broke out, he left the Avni Institute and high school and enlisted in the IDF. Later he married Nurit, finished his matriculation exams and for a short time studied history at Tel Aviv University. Ort in Ramat Gan. At the age of 30, he returned to painting inspired by the painter Zvi Shur, who told him that "the world is not abstract, and no painting has to be abstract - paint the world as you see it." Zvi Shur was exposed to modernist art and French expressionism, and even spent some time in Paris. Despite this, his paintings remain descriptive - realistic, made with impressionistic brushstrokes, based on the paintings of Edgar Degas, Paul Cezanne, etc. Shore had a great influence on Avi Shortz, who was often called "the direct successor of Zvi Shore".

Schwartz also studied painting with Professor Schwartzman, but was particularly influenced by two painters who became his "masters" - Samson Holtzman and Aryeh Lubin. Holtzman was identified with the "painters of the School of Paris", became famous as an excellent watercolorist, and Aria Lubin was influenced by Cezanne, and painted the light-flooded synagogues of Safed, the market sellers in Tiberias, Arab figures in the cafes, etc.

The friendship that developed between Shortz, Holtzman and Lubin led to regular meetings, where the three of them went to the markets of Ramla and Lod, but mainly worked and painted together in the cafes and in the port of Jaffa, sometimes joined by Nahum Gutman.

In 1979, Holzman invited Schurtz to come to Paris and join the workshops that were held at the famous "Grand Chaumier" art school and so it was.