Moshe Kupferman: Works from 1962-2000
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Opening January 8, 2001
"Moshe Kupferman: Works from 1962-2000", the largest exhibition ever to be held of work by Israel Prize laureate Moshe Kupferman, launches a year celebrating Israeli Art at the Israel Museum. This exhibition, featuring over 150 paintings and works on paper from the 1960's to the present, opens a year of exhibitions recognizing the achievements of veteran Israeli artists Michael Gross, Raffi Lavie, and Mordecai Ardon.
Drawn from public and private collections in Israel, Europe, and the US, the exhibition traces Kupferman's artistic development from the time of the birth of the State of Israel until today. Born in Poland in 1926, Moshe Kupferman spent World War II in the Ural and Kazakhstan internment camps. The only member of his family to survive, he emigrated to Israel in 1948 and helped establish Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot (Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz), where he continues to live and work today.
Largely self-taught, Moshe Kupferman began to paint at the kibbutz while working on its construction. His experience as a Holocaust survivor and his enduring association with the kibbutz both inform and shape his work, which is characterized by a contradiction between unbridled emotion and silent restraint. He creates powerful abstract images through painting and then wiping layers, thus creating dialectic between expressive drama and controlled introspection.
Moshe Kupferman held his first museum exhibition at the Israel Museum in 1969, which was followed by another in 1984. Major exhibitions of Kupferman's work have also been held at the Stedljik Musuem, Amsterdam (1984); the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris (1984); The North Carolina Museum of Art (1991); The Tel Aviv Museum (1998); The Jewish Museum of History and Art in Paris (1984); and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (1999-2000). His work appears in the public collections of the Guggenheim Museum, NY; the British Museum, London; the Musée national d'art, Paris; among others.
The exhibition displays Moshe Kupferman's body of works as an "open creation", deviating from the commonly accepted framework of a retrospective by breaking up the chronology of Kupferman's works so that they can be presented in groups according to their relationships--how they complement, complete, and contradict one another.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, 300-page catalogue including over 100 color reproductions and new interpretations of Kupferman's work.
James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum, states: "The Israel Museum is proud to begin 2002 with this retrospective exhibition of the work of Moshe Kupferman, inaugurating a year in which we celebrate significant achievements of Israeli Art through the works of several of the most important Israeli artists of our time. Especially in these times, it is vital to recognize Israel's continuing artistic and creative strength."
ISRAEL MUSEUM, JERUSALEM
