Joseph (yosef) Zaritsky (1891-1985) / Amsterdam 1955 / oil on canvas /
Must Know
Joseph Zaritsky was one of Israel’s greatest artists and early proponent of modern art. In 1948 he was among the founders of the Ofakim Hadashim (New Horizons) group. The group’s artists created a uniquely Israeli style of lyrical abstraction, characterized by the impression of being unfinished while using lines and strong color to express freedom and vitality.
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Joseph Zaritsky was born in 1891 in Borispol, in the Poltava Oblast (province), in the Southwestern portion of the Russian Empire (today the Kiev Oblast of the Ukraine), to a large, traditional family. His parents, Golda and Joseph Ben Ya’acov, were farmers with National-Zionist leanings. From 1910 to 1914 he studied art at the Academy of Arts in the city of Kiev. In 1923 Zaritsky immigrated to Israel alone and settled in Jerusalem; a year later his family followed.[5]
he was one and one of the early promoters of modern art in Israel. In 1948 Zaritsky was one of the founders of the “Ofakim Hadashim” group. he developed a painting style known as “lyrical abstraction.” In this kind of abstraction the images are created by the way the brush is pulled along the surface of the painting in order to produce compositions and paint stains that are for the most part square and are disengaged from the realistic source. The group sought a style that reflected the striving for Zionism and Modernism. In practice, this style was a variant of European modernism. This essentially figurative style was pushed toward the abstract by bold brush strokes, and a strong use of bright colors typical of the “Land of Israel” style, reflecting the strong Mediterranean light. From 1954-56 Zaritzky travelled to Paris and Amsterdam. Our work is an example of this lyrical abstract style that he painted on his visit to Amsterdam in 1955.
