Yosef Zaritsky, doyen of Israeli art, died yesterday at the age of 94. Art experts say he left his imprint on Israeli art, painting here for over 60 years.
Zaritsky was born in the Ukraine in 1891 and completed his art studies at the Kiev Academy of Art in 1914. After serving for a time in the Red Army, he settled in Jerusalem, where he was one of the founders of the New Horizons movement — a protest against the old-fashioned formal style he had found here. He was long regarded as the father of Israeli abstract art.
His first one-man show, exhibiting watercolors of scenes around the country, was held in 1924. In 1981 the Israel Museum accorded Zaritsky a retrospective exhibition in honor of his 90th birthday. A more extensive retrospective show was held at the Tel Aviv Museum last year, when some 340 drawings, watercolors and oil paintings were put on show. Several of his works are on display at museums abroad.
Zaritsky’s body is to lie in state at the Tel Aviv Museum tomorrow before burial at Kibbutz Tzova outside Jerusalem where he had recently spent the summer months, producing his noted windows series of paintings.
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