32 Facts About Moshe Gershuni

Moshe Gershuni was an Israeli painter and sculptor.

Moshe Gershuni was awarded the Israel Prize for Painting for his work in 2003, but in the end it was revoked and he was deprived of receiving the prize.

Moshe Gershuni was born in 1936 to Yona and Zvi Kutner, who had migrated to Mandatory Palestine from Poland.

In 1938 Mira, Moshe Gershuni's sister, was born, and in 1943, his brother Avshalom was born.

Moshe Gershuni was sent to the religious Bilu School and then continued his studies in a religious high school.

Moshe Gershuni's father managed to save several family members from the Holocaust by arranging immigration certificates to Mandatory Palestine, but some of his mother's relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.

Moshe Gershuni's teachers were Dov Feigin and Moshe Sternschuss, members of the "New Horizons" group, which during these years was beginning to lose the central place it had held in the world of Israeli art.

The use of this material constituted a continuation of his preoccupation with soft materials, but Moshe Gershuni introduced new characteristics which had been absent in his work before.

In "The Spirit is Willing, But the Flesh is Weak", for example, Moshe Gershuni exhibited inner tubes lined up in a row along a wall.

Moshe Gershuni created a large sculptural installation called "Inner Tubes," which included rows of 64 tire inner tubes arranged in piles and creating a net in the style of minimalist art.

Moshe Gershuni is photographed dressed in an Israeli army uniform, crawling over a dune in two opposing directions that are combined with one another.

Moshe Gershuni made aliyah to the Land of Israel in 1929.

In 1978 Moshe Gershuni began to teach at HaMidrasha - The Art Teachers Training College in Ramat Hasharon, where he continued to teach until 1986.

In 1978 Moshe Gershuni exhibited his work in a large group exhibition called "Artist-Society-Artist" at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Moshe Gershuni imposed red markings on them and a hand-written caption with the name of the work.

In 1980 Moshe Gershuni exhibited an installation called "Blood of My Heart" in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Moshe Gershuni received encouragement for the continuation of his creative life within the framework of psychological therapy he was receiving during this period.

In many of the paintings there began to appear quotes from Israeli songs and poetic verses from the Bible, which Moshe Gershuni indicated he had sung while painting these works.

The cyclamen, according to Moshe Gershuni, represents a national motif and often appears in Hebrew poems for children.

In 1984 Moshe Gershuni created the series "Hai Cyclamens," which was exhibited in the Givon Gallery in 1984.

In 1986 a large exhibition of Moshe Gershuni's paintings, curated by Zalmona, was held in the Israel Museum.

Moshe Gershuni juxtaposed them to graphic images such as stars or Magen Davids, swastikas, and fingerprints.

In May 1996 Moshe Gershuni held a joint exhibition with Raffi Lavie in the Givon Gallery in Tel Aviv.

The combination of these paintings with the paintings of Lavie, who for the first time used red paint stains and "shots" of color in his works, were interpreted as a direct reaction to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, even though Moshe Gershuni's works were painted before the murder.

In 1997 Moshe Gershuni suffered an anxiety attack and was hospitalized in the "Geha" Mental Health Center.

Parallel with this, Moshe Gershuni was invited to curate an exhibition at the Israel Museum, composed of works from the museum's collections.

In 2000 Moshe Gershuni became romantically involved with Juan Jose Garcia Pineiro, a young Spanish man he had met on the Internet in 1999.

Moshe Gershuni used watercolors and acrylic paint in shades of blue.

On June 24,2006, an exhibition opened at the Givon Art Gallery in which Moshe Gershuni displayed a series of paintings on fabric, done in the technique of Impasto [paint applied thickly] using oil paints and thickening gel, with a spray dripping water on the damp gel layer.

In spite of the effects of the disease, Moshe Gershuni continued with his artistic output.

In November 2010, a retrospective exhibition of Moshe Gershuni's works opened at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, curated by Sarah Breitberg-Semel.

Moshe Gershuni died on 22 January 2017 in Tel Aviv at the age of 80.