1. Joseph Zaritsky was one of the early promoters of modern art in the Land of Israel both during the period of the Yishuv and after the establishment of the State.
22 Facts About Joseph Zaritsky
1. 2.
Joseph Zaritsky was born in 1891 in Boryspil, in the Poltava Oblast, in the Southwestern portion of the Russian Empire, to a large, traditional Jewish family.
3.
When he was 7 or 8 Joseph Zaritsky was sent away from home for a long period of time.
4.
In 1915, during World War I, Joseph Zaritsky was conscripted into the Russian Army, where he served until 1917.
5.
In spite of the division, Joseph Zaritsky cancelled the illusion of spaciousness by using identical materials and coloring for both parts.
6.
In 1923 Joseph Zaritsky immigrated to the Land of Israel alone and settled in Jerusalem; a year later his family followed.
7.
In 1924 Joseph Zaritsky mounted his first solo exhibition in the club "Menorah" in Jerusalem.
8.
In 1927 Joseph Zaritsky left his family behind and went to Paris for a stay of several months.
9.
Later Joseph Zaritsky remarked on how impressed he was by the exhibits at the Guimet Museum of Asian Art.
10.
In 1929 Joseph Zaritsky participated in the "Egged" group's exhibition, held in an apartment on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv, in which artists such as Sionah Tagger, Arieh Lubin, and Pinchas Litvinovsky, among others, participated.
11.
In "Portrait of the Artist's Wife," an oil painting done in 1929, Joseph Zaritsky used the image of a bouquet of flowers in front of the main image.
12.
Between 1932 and 1933, Joseph Zaritsky opened an art "studia" adjoining the basement of the home where he lived on 18 Mapu Street.
13.
Nonetheless, the studio did not last long, and Joseph Zaritsky was destined to earn his living in the future, for the most part, from the real estate he owned.
14.
In 1935 Joseph Zaritsky moved to a new house that he built on the southeast corner of Ben Yehuda and Mapu Streets.
15.
Yona Fischer states that in Joseph Zaritsky's rooftop paintings there is an attempt at combining and unifying the light and the dark in his landscapes.
16.
Omer claims, Joseph Zaritsky left the objects in the paintings unnuanced.
17.
Joseph Zaritsky, who was chairman of the association at the time, decided on his own to create a list of artists who would participate because he was afraid that, left to the general membership, the list would include mediocre artists.
18.
Yona Fischer wrote in LaMerhav, that "the insult to the veteran artist Joseph Zaritsky typifies the way in which the world 'culture' is understood in our country," but he acknowledged that the choice of an abstract artist like Joseph Zaritsky for an exhibition intended for the masses was a mistake.
19.
In 1968 Joseph Zaritsky was the first recipient of the Sandberg Prize of Israeli Art From the Israel Museum, the money for which was donated by an American philanthropist.
20.
From 1968 to 1970 Joseph Zaritsky worked on a figurative portrait of art collector Ayala Zacks-Abramov.
21.
However, in addition to economic success, in his last years Joseph Zaritsky received a number of public tributes as well.
22.
Joseph Zaritsky's works differed from these paintings in that they lacked local symbols, such as local people, camels, or donkeys.