Bidspirit auction | Joseph Zaritsky

Joseph Zaritsky - 1891 - 1985. Yehiam, Circa 1951, Oil on jute canvas, 227x280 cm. Signed. Provenance: Gaby and Ami Brown Collection. Literature & Exhibition: • A Selection of Israeli Art from the Collection of Gaby and Ami Brown, Museum of Art, Ein Harod, October 2009 – April 2010, p. 237 (Illustrated). • Homage to Zaritzky, in Honor of his ninetieth Birthday, Israel Museum Jerusalem, Yona Fisher catalog no. 220, Aug. - Oct. 1981 no. 22 (Illustrated). Literature: Yosef Zaritsky - first monograph, Mordechai Omer, Masada Publishing House, 1987, page 145 (Illustrated). This striking and significant painting is yet another variation on the ”Yehiam” theme, one of several attempts by Zaritsky to adapt the motif to the medium of oil paintings. The ”Yehiam” motif served as inspiration for an intimate series of watercolors painted in the summer of 1951. Gideon Ofrat explains that the term ”painting based on” in Zaritsky's language signifies ”enhancing the autonomy of his painting, an act of further liberation from dependence on reality.” In this case, Zaritsky is painting based on Zaritsky - an oil painting based on his own watercolor. The transition from watercolor on paper to oil on canvas (jute) was a deliberate attempt to reframe the motif on a monumental scale and at a higher level of abstraction. This move underscores the importance of the theme in Zaritsky's eyes. Yona Fisher described Zaritsky's work habits, noting that the summer months were dedicated to open spaces and watercolors, while ”winter is dedicated to the studio in Tel Aviv, to solitary work [...], to oil painting. Summer is used to develop motifs, to define the status of forms within the 'square' and their distribution across the surface [...], winter is used to 'process the data, ' [...] to absorb external influences and apply them in a broad format.” Before us, if so, is primarily an upgrade in medium and a layering of pictorial thought. To this, we shall add a less recognized ideological-Zionist dimension. The motif originated during Zaritsky's stay in Kibbutz Yehiam in the Western Galilee during the summers of 1949-1951, where he taught at a painting seminar organized by the Artists' Association of HaShomer HaTza'ir for painting enthusiasts in the movement's kibbutzim. Zaritsky arrived in the young kibbutz, then only seven years old (Kibbutz Yehiam was founded in 1946), and was captivated by the mountainous landscape, the agricultural fields, the clear air, and the communal life of the young kibbutz members. This encounter with the Galilean kibbutz yielded a series of paintings on paper, reminiscent of ”études” in Zaritsky's language, combining freehand pencil drawing and flowing watercolor work, converging into relatively small formats of approximately 50x40 cm. The watercolors of the ”Yehiam” series - transparent, airy, and luminous - are considered one of the peaks of Zaritsky's early work and one of the highlights of Israeli art in general, rivaling another series of watercolors of a different mountain landscape - the landscapes of Kibbutz Tzuba near Jerusalem - two decades later. Despite advocating for pictorial abstraction as the ultimate expression of modernism - a thesis that was the guiding principle of the ”New Horizons” group, which Zaritsky led without no doubt - nature and landscape never completely disappeared from his paintings. On the axis between figuration and abstraction, the ”Yehiam” series is positioned at an intermediate stage, based on defined geometric shapes (fields) and free biomorphic drawing, attempting to bypass figuration while still indicating human presence in the space. What was Zaritsky impressed by in Yehiam, and what did he seek to convey through the recurring kibbutz motif? The entire series is built around Zaritsky's idyllic view of kibbutz life and his deep impression of the renewed and enriching connection between humans and nature. A closer look reveals four recurring motifs in the series: an agricultural landscape of fields - plots of triangles and rectangles - forming the spatial 'square' of the painting; a group of figures representing a family - a couple and a child lifted in the air - sitting in the heart of the landscape; a horse accompanying the figures, symbolizing both wild and domesticated nature; and the figure of the painter himself, with a palette in hand, observing the landscape from the side or from above, like a conductor overseeing the entire scene. Zaritsky's impulse to introduce his own figure, or the metaphor of the painter, into the frame of the painting - a motif that appeared clearly in the series of roof paintings from the late 1930s and early 1940s - aimed, as in Brechtian alienation theater, to negate the illusion of the painting and emphasize the act of painting itself as a parallel and autonomous plane. The motif of a family - parents and their infant child - immersed in the tranquility of nature in the kibbutz,