Shalom from Israel, and Bonjour and Velkommen to my friends from all parts of the planet who came to visit me. I am an Israeli/Croatian/Italian artist currently based in Israel, in its picturesque Northern part with endless sand beaches and busy ports and silent green hills and streams. The name of the place is Nahariya, and I profoundly enjoy it.
As you can see from my pictures and drawings, my work is inspired by abstract expressionism and avant-garde greats like Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935), Wassily Kandinsky (1886–1944), Paul Cezanne (1839–1906), Georges Braque (1882-1963), Italian futurists Gino Severini (1883-1966), Fortunato Depero (1892-1960) e Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), and the tropical colors and patterns of the natural environment in Italy, Croatia and Israel. I work in oils and acrylic paints, and I love the freedom and energy of the passionate painting style, when I’m putting every single bit of my skills and power and soul into a picture. Believe me, when I put a final stroke to a picture, I’m as exhausted as a farmer having tilled a great field of crop. And if I put my picture for exhibition or sale, it is really the best of what I’ve done - being a perfectionist, I always reassess all my pictures and throw away mercilessly or remake meticulously what isn’t 100 percent fine in terms of color, or composition, or perspective.
My soul and heart have been always torn between painting and literature. By my primary education and training in Bucharest and Spalato and Paris I am a painter. But when I turned 40, my ancient passion for literature made me dedicate more time to writing novels. This dualism within myself proceeds, my painting becoming richer and more meaningful with the help of my literary affections and experience. And I work as book illustrator making covers and drawings for my and my friends’s books.
Since 2010, I started making porcelain and delft-ware plates with my design in Germany (Meissen) and France (Limoges). The plates are in limited editions up to only 50 pieces each and cost not less than 150 dollars each, but when my admirers send me photo with my plates hanging on the walls of their homes, I nearly jump with joy - this is so exciting and rewarding to see lovely porcelain plates with your sketches in homes in USA and Canada and Germany! Cheaper coffee and tea cups/mugs can also be ordered for some 30 dollars (not less than 2 pieces).
My canvases came to the first exhibition in Bucharest in 1992, in the former Casa Poporului built by Ceausescu which is now the seat of Romanian Parliament and houses many exhibitions and Art museum. The owner of Galerie Pierre Huber in Geneva saw them on Swiss TV Romande whose reporter filmed the opening of Bucharest exhibition, and selected six canvases of mine for the exhibition in his gallery in 1992. When they were sold in Geneva, I earned the money to go to Switzerland for the first time and visited Geneva, Lausanne and Martigny.
Getting so close to France, I cdnt resist my ancient temptation to go there and visit Paris, the true art’s hub, the cherished focal point and bustling nerve center for artists, young and old. It had been my dream since I entered the Institutul de Arta si Design in Bucharest. As you probably know, Bucharest is often called “Little Paris on Danube”, or “micul Paris” in Romanian, and the Romanian literature, culture and art and the very way of life, especially in the beginning of the XX century, were France-oriented and spirited with the French spirit and vitality. Many Romanian painters had studied and lived and exhibited themselves in France, and my mentors in the Institutul de Arta were no exception. My principal teacher, the great painter Marin Gherasim (1937-2017) who considered himself a pupil of Constantin Brancusi and a follower of Marcel Iancu, as well as the other mentors Henry Mavrodin (1937-2022) who was a pupil of Corneliu Baba, and Mihai Viorel Tomsaneanu (1949-2022) who was a friend of Gabriel Popa and Romul Nutiu - they all had been to Paris, or worked there, or had some sweetest and happiest moments of their artistic life and experience related to Paris and to France, and considered themselves to be part of broad European and specifically French culture as well as Romanian. So the very case of my studing in Bucharest under the guidance of such painters as Marin Gherasim, Henry Mavrodin, Mihai Viorel Tomsaneanu and my favourite lecturer in theater art, unmatched Hristofenia Cazacu (1929-2022) actually predestined my going to Paris.