Flowers

TANYA WISSOTZKY AND ALEXANDER GLATCHANSKY

The works of Tanya Wissotzky and Alexander Glatchansky are created by the interaction of two independent imaginations working in intellectual and aesthetic harmony. Each complements the other, producing works in which the process of creation is revealed as it reaches a harmonious yet complex resolution.

They have achieved a painterly idiom which is a visual dynamic of crescendo and diminuendo, a vibration between the sensuous and cerebral. Working in acrylic, pen and ink, and collage on specially prepared canvas, they speak in many voices which are yet one voice. The subdued pastel tones of the background swirl and gather romantically to focal points as rich in association as they are in colour. Superimposed upon them are the learned and expert line drawings of scenes both evocative and ironic.

These scenes, like sketches from the artist’s notebook, each contain a world of their own while commenting on the canvas as a whole. The excerpts of calligraphy from old English flower painting manuals underline the concern with process as well as result, while other calligraphic quotations celebrate Paris of the Twenties which is certainly one of the artists’ many sources of visual reference. In the still lifes, the classically executed centrepiece has all the nostalgia and romanticism of a time past, the colour rich and sensuous.

Juxtaposed against this are the music scores, totally dry and abstract and yet evocative of gaiety and pleasure. The eye is caught in pleasant surprise as the smaller quotations, in collage ink or paint, reveal themselves, linking the chain of associations in fascinatingly various ways. The work of this pair of young Israeli artists has received critical acclaim and success both in Israel and abroad and their works are to be found in public and private collections all over the world.

Tanya Wissotzky and Alexander Glatchansky were born in the same year, 1959, and studied at the Odessa Academy of Fine Arts. One of Ms. Wissotzky’s main interests besides her work as an artist is in the conservation of Nature. Alexander Glatchansky is a fine book illustrator in his own right and has been awarded prizes for his achievements in this field.

TANYA WISSOTZKY AND ALEXANDER GLATCHANSKY

The works of Tanya Wissotzky and Alexander Glatchansky are created by the interaction of two independent imaginations working in intellectual and aesthetic harmony. Each complements the other, producing works in which the process of creation is revealed as it reaches a harmonious yet complex resolution.

They have achieved a painterly idiom which is a visual dynamic of crescendo and diminuendo, a vibration between the sensuous and cerebral. Working in acrylic, pen and ink, and collage on specially prepared canvas, they speak in many voices which are yet one voice. The subdued pastel tones of the background swirl and gather romantically to focal points as rich in association as they are in colour. Superimposed upon them are the learned and expert line drawings of scenes both evocative and ironic.

These scenes, like sketches from the artist’s notebook, each contain a world of their own while commenting on the canvas as a whole. The excerpts of calligraphy from old English flower painting manuals underline the concern with process as well as result, while other calligraphic quotations celebrate Paris of the Twenties which is certainly one of the artists’ many sources of visual reference. In the still lifes, the classically executed centrepiece has all the nostalgia and romanticism of a time past, the colour rich and sensuous.

Juxtaposed against this are the music scores, totally dry and abstract and yet evocative of gaiety and pleasure. The eye is caught in pleasant surprise as the smaller quotations, in collage ink or paint, reveal themselves, linking the chain of associations in fascinatingly various ways. The work of this pair of young Israeli artists has received critical acclaim and success both in Israel and abroad and their works are to be found in public and private collections all over the world.

Tanya Wissotzky and Alexander Glatchansky were born in the same year, 1959, and studied at the Odessa Academy of Fine Arts. One of Ms. Wissotzky’s main interests besides her work as an artist is in the conservation of Nature. Alexander Glatchansky is a fine book illustrator in his own right and has been awarded prizes for his achievements in this field.

TANYA WISSOTZKY AND ALEXANDER GLATCHANSKY

The works of Tanya Wissotzky and Alexander Glatchansky are created by the interaction of two independent imaginations working in intellectual and aesthetic harmony. Each complements the other, producing works in which the process of creation is revealed as it reaches a harmonious yet complex resolution.

They have achieved a painterly idiom which is a visual dynamic of crescendo and diminuendo, a vibration between the sensuous and cerebral. Working in acrylic, pen and ink, and collage on specially prepared canvas, they speak in many voices which are yet one voice. The subdued pastel tones of the background swirl and gather romantically to focal points as rich in association as they are in colour. Superimposed upon them are the learned and expert line drawings of scenes both evocative and ironic.

These scenes, like sketches from the artist’s notebook, each contain a world of their own while commenting on the canvas as a whole. The excerpts of calligraphy from old English flower painting manuals underline the concern with process as well as result, while other calligraphic quotations celebrate Paris of the Twenties which is certainly one of the artists’ many sources of visual reference. In the still lifes, the classically executed centrepiece has all the nostalgia and romanticism of a time past, the colour rich and sensuous.

Juxtaposed against this are the music scores, totally dry and abstract and yet evocative of gaiety and pleasure. The eye is caught in pleasant surprise as the smaller quotations, in collage ink or paint, reveal themselves, linking the chain of associations in fascinatingly various ways. The work of this pair of young Israeli artists has received critical acclaim and success both in Israel and abroad and their works are to be found in public and private collections all over the world.

Tanya Wissotzky and Alexander Glatchansky were born in the same year, 1959, and studied at the Odessa Academy of Fine Arts. One of Ms. Wissotzky’s main interests besides her work as an artist is in the conservation of Nature. Alexander Glatchansky is a fine book illustrator in his own right and has been awarded prizes for his achievements in this field.

ABRAHAM BINDER – A GREAT MASTER

Particularly memorable are his urban landscapes with their predominance of blues and aquamarines, composed of a profusion of squares and rectangles, crowding one another and covering nearly the entire canvas. The angular shapes are interspersed with radiant dots of red, gold and yellow, like the lights of the big city.

Traces of these shapes are discernible in Binder’s work to this day, in the angularity of splashes of color which, no longer crowded together, are now well separated to create an airy spaciousness. Not only the splashes of color – the intervening space, too – creates figurative effects in the artist’s treatment.

Abraham Binder is not a “cerebral” painter. Neither identified with any particular modern school, nor preaching any narrow artistic doctrine, he is an emotional artist: his inspiration, derived from the heart, leads him on to the most varied range of treatments in his artistic work. In vain might one try to persuade him to define his personal conception of painting. He is not one to indulge in verbal explanations. But his sheer artistic skill, his virtuosity with the paint brush, did impel him to experiment widely with the artistic techniques of the modern age. And his exceptional talent stood him in good stead in all this experimentation.

Binder’s large-scale urban landscapes are not mere constructs to represent our present-day architecture with its pervasive angularity. Made up as they are of large splashes of color, Binder’s unique color composition qualifies these canvases to be ranked among the foremost artistic works in Israeli painting. They are uniquely Binder, very different from what we see in the work of his contemporaries.

He has also done large paintings of Jerusalem – not the Jerusalem of gloom and holiness, but a Jerusalem of contrast to the flat topography of Tel-Aviv; it is this different topography which here provides the challenge for him as a painter. And the colors – the colors are bright, full of light, an inner illumination which seems to emanate from the artist himself, rather than from the sun beating down from above.

So many great artists have built their life’s work upon watercolors. Binder’s watercolors are in no way inferior in their artistic worth to many of those, what with their spontaneity, their translucent quality, their color combinations, and the artist’s ability to say so much with an economy of brush strokes.

Abraham Binder’s insatiable curiosity has advanced him into the front ranks of our nation’s artists.

David Giladi