Israeli artist Avigdor Arikha, who learned the power of art as a child during the Holocaust to sketch scenes from a concentration camp in pieces of recovered paper, has died in Paris. He was 81.
Arikha Romanian-born painter, draftsman, and engraver, he became one of the most important contemporary artists from Israel, expressing his portraits and scenes of everyday life – a red umbrella against a wall, a bookshelf overflowing with a jumble of bottles in a cabinet – the enigmatic and disconcerting beauty.
“He had an exceptional gift for capturing something deep in people and express his mystery,” said French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand.
Arikha died of complications from cancer Thursday at his house in Paris, where he spent most of his adult life, said Janis Gardner Cecil, director of sales of the Marlborough Gallery in New York, which represented him.
The artist, who left the abstract art of figurative work in the 1960s, was well known for portraits of topics including Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, actress Catherine Deneuve and her close friend, the writer Samuel Beckett. Survey also produced many portraits of himself and his wife, poet Anne Atik.
Born in Romania in 1929, Arikha was redrawn to cope when he was sent to a labor camp in Ukraine at age 12. Seventeen sketches survived the war: One showed a pile of corpses in a car and the body of a nude woman who plunged into a ditch.
The drawings drew the attention of the International Red Cross during a field inspection. Soon after, Arikha was allowed out with a group of children already cleared for release, after he took the place and the identity of a child who had died, according to the biography of Duncan Thomson, “Arikha.
The artist’s father died in the Holocaust, and his mother learned that her children were living in Palestine after the war.
New books, Arikha lived on a kibbutz, studied at the Bezalel School and fought in the war for the creation of Israel, during which he was wounded in 1948. Recognizing his talent, supporters of Israel insisted on going to Paris to study and financed it.
Upon arrival in Paris in 1949, Arikha left their luggage at their hotel at 7:30 am and ran to the Louvre, he fell asleep outside while waiting for it to open, Marlborough Gallery, citing his wifeArtist. He built on the foundations of Israeli studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, a city he adored and where he liked to go for a walk.
Arikha works are in permanent collections worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Besides making art, Arikha also wrote extensively about it. He was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by France in 2005.
Details of funeral arrangements were not immediately available. Arikha is survived by his wife, Anne Atik, two daughters, Alba Simonetta Smail and Noga, and two grandchildren.
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