Author Description

Many children draw, but Avigdor Arikha's drawings were noticed at the age of twelve, when he was deported to a Romanian-run concentration camp in Transnistria. His drawings of the harrowing scenes he had witnessed in the camp, were shown to Red Cross delegates, and were the catalyst for the transportation of Arikha and 1500 further children to Palestine in 1944. After studying at Jerusalem's Bezalel School of Art, followed by a scholarship to the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, Arikha struck up close friendships with Alberto Giacometti and Samuel Beckett, whose sparing use of language taught him the significance of every brush stroke. These friendships lasted throughout their lives and accompanied Arikha in the creative shift from his abstract period to what he described as his 'post-abstract naturalism'."