Avraham Goldberg
1906, Poland - 1980, Israel
Three Jewish Women from the Shtetl
Original Hand-Signed Ink on Paper
Artist Name: Avraham Goldberg
Title: Three Jewish women from the Shtetl
Signature Description: Hand-signed lower right
Technique: Ink on paper
Size: 18 x 14 cm / 7.09" x 5.51" inch
Frame: Unframed
Condition: Very good condition
Artist's Biography:
Avraham Goldberg, Painter. born 1906, Poland. Immigrated to Eretz Israel 1919. Died in Tel Aviv 1980.
Avraham Goldberg (1906–1980) was a prominent representative of the Paris School (École de Paris) influence on Israeli art. His work is celebrated for its intimacy, quiet dignity, and a sophisticated approach to color that favors atmosphere over raw detail.
Stylistic
Features
·
Intimate Domesticity: Goldberg
was the master of the "interior." He frequently painted domestic
scenes—figures sitting at tables, reading, or playing music. These works
capture a sense of stillness and middle-class European Jewish life translated
to the Israeli landscape.
·
Tonalism and the
"Parisian" Palette: His color world is characterized by soft, muted
tones. Rather than using the harsh, bright light often associated with early
Israeli painting, Goldberg utilized a "silvery" or pearlescent light.
His palette often consists of delicate grays, ochres, and deep blues that
create a hazy, dreamlike quality.
·
Solid Figuration with
Soft Outlines: While his figures have a clear physical presence and volume
(reminiscent of Cézanne), their edges are often blurred. He avoids sharp,
aggressive lines, preferring to define form through the subtle transition of
color and shadow.
·
The "Lyrical"
Still Life: Even in his still lifes, there is a rhythmic, poetic quality. His
arrangements of fruit, vases, or flowers feel less like formal exercises and
more like "portraits" of objects, treated with the same reverence as
his human subjects.
Studies
Art Academy, New York
Lived in Paris and Tel Aviv.
"Goldberg
had three mentors: Rembrandt, Daumier & the Jewish town. From them he
learned the art of shadows and light, of character and of sadness.
This is a Jewish painter at his entity, his topics and his spirituality.
however, he was also a europian painter - through his methods, his selections
of tone, and his blend of color and tones."
(Source: "Painting and sculpting in Israel" by Dr. Haim Gamzu, Dvir publishing).
Selected solo
exhibitions:
1939 The
Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv
1942 Katz Art
Gallery, Tel Aviv
1946 Abraham
Goldberg - Oil Paintings, The Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem
1950 The
Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem
1982 Abraham Goldberg:
Paintings - Memorial exhibition on the anniversary of his death, Mishkan Museum
of Art, Kibbutz Ein Harod
Abraham Goldberg: Paintings in Colour and
Black & White, Wilfrid Israel Museum of Asian Art and Studies, Kibbutz
Hazorea.
Selected Group exhibitions:
1933 Tel Aviv
Museum of Art (with Anna Neumann, Issai Kulviansky and Jakob Steinhardt)
1943 The Second
Exhibition of Selected Palestinian Artists, The Bezalel National Museum,
Jerusalem
1944 The
Self-Portrait, Art Gallery of the ''Habima'' Thater, Tel Aviv
Collective Annual Exhibition by
Palestinian Artists, Art Gallery of the ''Habima'' Thater, Tel Aviv
1958 Ten Years of
Israeli Painting, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
Israel 1948-1958: Watercolors,
Drawings, Graphics, The Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem
1965 The
''Shtetl'', Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
1967 Artists in
Israel for the Defense, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
1971 Israeli
Art: Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Works, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
1972 Jewish
Artists Association, The Jerusalem Theatre
1982 / 1983 Yad
Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
2002 localities.il
- Israeli Art from the Collection and Elsewhere, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2004 Israeli
Art in Jewish Art Path: Historical Sketch, Time for Art - Center for Israeli
Art, Tel Aviv
2019 Painting from the Museum Collection, Petach Tikvah Museum of Art.
Avraham
Goldberg (1906, Poland - 1980, Tel Aviv, Israel)
was an Israeli painter.
The most Jewish artist among the artists in Israel
Avraham Goldberg, son of Joseph and Rebecca-Sheindel, immigrated to the
Land of Israel in 1922 at age 16.
Sometime later he went to study painting in the United States and Paris,
the two places he visited several times for extended periods, and presented his
work there. Even then he became known as an Eretz Israel artist who paints
"Jewish art", referring to his special sensitiveness to what is
literary known as "Jewish soul". This setting is relevant to him
because he was more likely to focus on one issue: memories from the parents'
home that was destroyed.
Goldberg created working relationships and friendships with first class artists
overseas and they opened doors for him. Nevertheless, he preferred to return to
Israel and continued in creating his special world there. For Goldberg, Israel
was the one and only place he called home.
But wherever he lived Goldberg continued to paint his unique world in ink,
pastels and oil.
Dr. Haim Gamzu, the highly-renowned art historian and critic of Israeli
art, wrote in his book "Painting and Sculpture in Israel":
“Avraham
Goldberg is the least "Eretz Israeli" among the Israeli
painters, but their most "Jewish"... almost all of his works evoke
the echo of the non-existent Jewish town. They are soaked with a kind of
internal Judaism, not rooted in the external landscapes of the town but with
childhood memories clinging to the mother’s expression, the singing in his
father's prayer, the home folklore since then. Goldberg paints the
landscapes of the soul ... Goldberg's work is not simplistic. It reveals a
little and conceals a lot ... over the old furniture and memories shadows are
whispering and souls are floating, vague, somewhat frightened, melancholy with
the sorrows of childhood that has passed, never to return ...”.
An artist who
immortalized his memories
The attitude of the professional criticism to Goldberg always derives from the
perspective that his paintings retained an ember of the world that was set on
fire.
He never used the term "Holocaust". But through his daily work
there was a feeling that he had a special mission, commemorating the 'how' -
how it was before.
In order to deal with the consequences of World War II he devoted himself
to his memoirs populated with figures
that seemed to have been deleted.
Only occasionally he deviated from drawing his characters and drew other topics
as allegedly a need for perspective to examine his own making from a different point of view. But Goldberg
always returned to his familiar characters with their mysterious and shadowy
background.
Goldberg created his miniature paintings when he found himself pursued his life
in occupied Paris in World War II . Friends arranged for him a
refuge inside a narrow cubicle with a tiny kitchen where he painted in pastels
that his friends were able to get him. He overturned his cigarette cases
and used the cardboard surfaces for painting organizing them on a small table
like a chessboard.
Goldberg also painted still lifes and landscapes of fields sprawling along the
distance, hallucinatory like dreams, bordering on the abstract, as if he was
looking for some rest.
When Goldberg was asked about the distressed conditions and the limited ability
to draw in a place where the elbow immediately hits the wall, he replied:
"When an artist wants to draw, he will do so even under the table".
"The
Jewish Rembrandt"
During his lifetime Avraham Goldberg was called "The Jewish Rembrandt".
It seemed he managed to discover the source of wondrous light of Rembrandt when
he began to reveal what Dr. Gamzu named "Landscapes of his soul". The
British Jewish historian, Professor Cecil Roth, agreed with the
opinion of Gamzu in his book "The Jewish Art" and added that he found
in Goldberg’s works even the spirit of the Dutch painter Jozef Israëls.
Goldberg’s paintings indicate that he understood better than many others the
secrets of the Jewish soul, not only in terms of the theme and story, but mostly
because he managed to instill in the beholder a sense that he found a way to
express the unknown dimension of the intangible soul; he managed to create this
deep impression through the deceptive and intriguing contrast created among the
different colors and the effect of light and shadow.
He worked as the director of the theater that he built on his own.
Out of the dark scenes he disclosed to the viewer the bright patch, while
hiding the non-important and embedding it in the background, as an artist who
knows well the secrets and value of the dimming of abstract art.
The Studio - Home to artists
Goldberg’s home
in Ramat Aviv, where lived and worked, was also known as a place where renowned
artists, collectors and art dealers often met.
His works were in high demand and they can be found in museums and private
collections in Israel and around the world and abroad.
Even artists who shared totally different attitude and perception toward art,
and were among the innovators and founders of the lyrical abstract "New
Horizons" group, such as Avigdor Stematsky and Pinchas
Abramovich, were among his close friends. There were fascinating
conversations on the subject of creating and creation. Despite the
difference in the artistic approach they had a fruitful dialogue.
The renowned Jewish-American artist Abraham Walkowitz
(1878-1965), a pioneer of the American modern painting (particularly known
for a series of drawings that focused on the dancer Isadora Duncan), was a
friend of Goldberg and appreciated him as an unusual and important artist, and
often emphasized his integrity and broad artistic perception that enabled
Goldberd to bridge over different ways of expressions as long as he recognized
the fundamental truth.
"By accepting those who are different he is completely at peace with
himself. His painting and his fellow artists’ painting are the essence of his
life," Walkowitz said.
Years later, in 1979, when Goldberg had terminal illness, he proved how right
was Walkowitz when he refused to treatments that would take away the quality of
life from the time left to “finish” his works.
Goldberg always claimed that a painting was made "complete" only when
it was purchased and taken away from the studio. But as long as he
possessed it, he could go back, “touch" it and possibly make some
improvement.
Until his last days, Goldberg "touched" his works and died at his
home as he wanted.
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