Homage to Avigdor Arikha: Self-Portraits | Illustrations to "A Stray Dog" by S.Y. Agnon

This two-part exhibition is presented as homage to Avigdor Arikha, who died this year at the age of 81. The first part, planned with the artist before his death, includes illustrations to S.Y. Agnon's "A Stray Dog," combining the creative work of Arikha and Agnon. It was published by Tarshish in 1960. The illustrations in various techniques well represent Arikha's art in the 1950s, beginning with the figurative style and ending with abstract painting. This part of the exhibition was prepared in collaboration with the Agnon House, Jerusalem.

The second part of the exhibition includes 19 self-portraits painted by Arikha between 1948 and 2001. Compared with earlier portraits, which depict the artist as a soldier or a pianist, the later ones deal with his artistic oeuvre as a painter and as an observer of his work, set against the studio milieu and its appurtenances. More than anything else, Arikha focused in his last years on his own posture and facial expression, seeking to capture the animate and the inanimate, with an almost defeatist awareness of the inability of art to seize the transient.