Dudu Geva Was Here: New in the Collection

Already in the 1970s and 1980s, he gained recognition for his iconic characters, most notably the Duck (Kol Ha’ir), which became a symbol of absurdity and provocation. For years, Geva published numerous comics series and columns in both national and local newspapers, combining black humor with a sharp critique of Israeli society. These included “Joseph and His Brothers,” centered on an Ashkenazi clerk portrayed as an “eternal loser” crushed by the system; “Ahalan Vesahalan,” the story of two hapless Jerusalem detectives, created by Geva and Kobi Niv in their book “Ridiculous”; “The Meaning of Life,” “The Road to Happiness,” and additional works. Geva’s characters and columns, which became cultural touchstones in Israel, helped shape the humorous discourse and the minimalist visual language that characterized satirical illustration during those years.

Alongside his work as a comics artist and journalist, Geva illustrated posters and children’s books and worked as a visual artist, while also pursuing a passionate engagement with the history of art. He began drawing at a very young age, observing himself, his family, animals, and his immediate surroundings. The influence of modernist masters – including Picasso and Matisse – is evident in his work, which includes pencil drawings executed with a confident hand, as well as watercolors, acrylic paintings, pastels, and collages.

On the twentieth anniversary of his death, Geva’s family generously donated approximately 80 works to the collection of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. This display represents a small portion of their gift, and an even smaller portion of Geva’s extensive body of work over the years. Nevertheless, it vividly conveys the broad range of media he employed, his unforgettable characters, his dry yet incisive humor, the distinctive style with which he is identified, and his use of art as a means of social critique. There is no doubt that Geva’s works continue to resonate as relevant today. They reflect the country’s complex reality and hold up a mirror to Israeli society – to its everyday politics, violence, bureaucracy, and institutional structures – while endowing the characters and Israeli citizens it portrays with a flawed, humorous humanity that is easy to identify with.