Nachum Gutman
1898 - 1980

1898 - 1980

Playing Music on the Balcony in Jaffa, 1920s, Oil on canvas, 54X65 cm. Signed. The authenticity of the painting has been confirmed by Prof. Hemi Gutman, the artist’s son. * The buyer of this painting will be asked to exhibit this painting on loan to the Nachum Gutman Museum for an exhibition in April 2018. The discovery of this unknown and delightful painting by Nachum Gutman carries us to a balcony in Jaffa, with a view of the sea, to a group of five young Arab men, handsome, well dressed, sitting around a ’finjan’ (coffee pot), pastries (?) and a watermelon, listening to their friends playing the flute etc. Stereotypical Arabs, imagined: all have the same face, moustaches, all wearing red hats (tarbush). At the sight of this painting, it is difficult not to reminisce a forgotten painting a by Gutman, of the same period, depicting three young Arab men, they too stereotypical, wearing red tarbushes and holding hands, the first on the right with a pole in his hand. What could at first seem to the experienced-with- intifada viewer as three men prepared to lash out at Jews, turns out to be three men dancing the Arab folk dance Debka. If so, in this watercolor as in the oil painting – we witness an Arab celebration. Noteworthy – most paintings depicting Arabs, painted in the land of Israel in the 1920’s, portray friendly Arabs having a good time – enjoying spare time and/or celebrating; or playing in improvised parks in Kerem Zeytim. And what of the painting of the Arab picnic (including music playing) by Moshe Castel? Or, the young Arab men (red tarbush and smart clothing) hunting birds in Gutman’s paintings? And the young Arab (yes, him too with a red tarbush and smart clothing) riding a horse in another painting by Gutman? And the Arab women riding to the fields in a carriage that Gutman again paints? Indeed when Gutman paints the peasants resting in the field, he dresses with them holiday clothing. And so, in a very clear manner, his Arabs celebrated in the painting ”Holiday in the Fields of Jaffa”. This painting is a ”relative” of the Gutman-esque painting from 1926, ”Women on the Balcony ”: The six Arab women together with a little girl on a balcony very similar to balcony visible in the background of the five men celebrating in our painting. Are we in the ”Bella Vista” hotel on the shore of Jaffa? Perhaps, based on pictures of the hotel from the period. Gutman places once again the Arab figures (the horse rider, the carriage passenger) at the façade of this hotel. Add the coffee and watermelon on the same identical round table in both paintings, the women’s gathering serves as the female side of this painting. In fact, in a museum exhibition it would be correct to hang both paintings side by side, as a confirmation of the male-female tension in Gutman’s paintings of that decade, complementing the passionate Arab Jaffa, erotic and not hiding in the fields. In 1926, lest we forget, the country already experienced the fall of Trumpeldor and his comrades, the murder of Brener and the assassinations in Tel Aviv. But Nachum Gutman, as with other Israeli artists of the period, refrained from seeing Arabs as their enemy, on the contrary – they romanticized them in their paintings. Until the riots of Tarpat. Until the catastrophe in Hebron and other cities – the Arab celebrations never ceased to be portrayed in local painting, and especially in Gutman’s paintings. This painting is an exciting revelation. (Translated and adapted from Gidon Ofrat).