Avigdor ARIKHA
(Rădăuți 1928 - Paris 2010)
Olives in a Glass
Watercolour.
118 x 118 mm. (4 5/8 x 4 5/8 in.)
118 x 118 mm. (4 5/8 x 4 5/8 in.)
The present sheet was executed in 1985. The medium of watercolour seems to have been used by Avigdor Arikha primarily in the middle and late 1970s, and accounts for only a relatively small part of his drawn oeuvre as a whole.
Executed in 1985, this small watercolour belonged to the American art dealer and museum curator Janie C. Lee (1937-2024), who had mounted exhibitions of Arikha’s work in her gallery in Houston in 1974 and 1979. Lee assembled a choice personal collection of 20th century drawings, part of which was gifted to the newly-established Menil Drawing Institute in Houston in 2016.
Executed in 1985, this small watercolour belonged to the American art dealer and museum curator Janie C. Lee (1937-2024), who had mounted exhibitions of Arikha’s work in her gallery in Houston in 1974 and 1979. Lee assembled a choice personal collection of 20th century drawings, part of which was gifted to the newly-established Menil Drawing Institute in Houston in 2016.
Arguably one of the finest draughtsmen of the second half of the 20th century, Avigdor Arikha was born to German-speaking Jewish parents in Romania in 1929. The drawings he produced as a thirteen-year old boy while imprisoned in a Ukrainian labour camp brought him to the attention of the International Red Cross, who in 1944 rescued him and sent him to a kibbutz in Palestine. After a period of study at the Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts in Jerusalem, Arikha went to Paris in 1949, where he completed his training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He had his first solo exhibitions in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in 1952 and 1953, and eventually settled in Paris in 1954, studying philosophy at the Sorbonne and establishing lifelong and intimate friendships with Samuel Beckett and Alberto Giacometti. Arikha began his career as an abstract painter, but in 1965 abandoned painting completely, and spent the next eight years working on black and white drawings, as well as a series of monochromatic etchings. By the time he returned to painting in 1973, he had become a committed figurative painter, producing portraits of family and friends, interior scenes and still life subjects. Arikha’s work was the subject of numerous gallery and museum exhibitions in Europe and America throughout his career, with large retrospective exhibitions held in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Edinburgh in 1998-1999 and London in 2006.
Provenance
Janie Curry Lee, New York and Houston
Thence by descent.
Thence by descent.
