Menia Litvak

Israeli Folk Art Bright Colorful Naive Dragon Painting

1979

My life as an artist started in 1976 when I left Kishinev (Bessarabia) for Israel. In my youth I did not have the opportunity to study an regularly, although I learned painting during some two years at the Belle-Arts Academy in Kishinev and one year in Bucarest. My youth was spent during world war 2 when Bessarabia was annexed by the Soviet Union, years of hunger and the need to work very hard to be able to survive. I worked as a retoucher of photographs in a studio. When I arrived in Israeli went to live in Jerusalem and took up painting as my only ocupation, not as in Russia where it was one of my occupations which I had to do sometimes in hiding, stealong time from my everyday jobs. Israel, its colourings, impressed me much: the blue of the sky, the turquoise of the sea, the palette of desert colours. The stones of Israel looked alive and I wished I could paint them all. In 19761 started to expose my work. Since then I participated in a number of exhibitions in groups and alone. Since 1984 I am a member of the Israeli Union of Painters and Sculptors. The last exhibition where I took part was at the Salon des Beaux-Arts in Paris together in a group of Jerusalem artists. Israel has had a Vibrant Folk Art, Naive art scene for a long time now artists like Yisrael Paldi, Nahum Guttman...

This painting is iconic of Pichas Shaar's aesthetic, and stylistic influences. A ceramic mosaicist and sculptor as well as a painter, Shaars strong decorative sense was evident in his colorful canvas, with their frequent rectilinear geometry, depicting stylized figures, often mythological or biblical subjects. Pinchas Shaar (born Szwarc, later Shaar) was born in Lodz, Poland in 1923. already at a young age he drew small graffiti and characters of fairy tales. at sixteeen he met the Polish painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, a disciple of the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich, who encouraged Pinchas’ artistic education. Strzeminski encouraged Pinchas' artistic education and introduced him to the works of such painters as Picasso, Leger, Matisse, and Mondrian. Pinchas had his first exhibition in 1938 and also completed photomontages for a poetry book by Moshe Broderson that was published in 1939. Then, in September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. On February 1940 the Jews of Lodz had to move to a ghetto and perform forced labor. The artist experienced the horrors of war and the Nazi holocaust concentration camps. Pinchas worked in a prefabricated furniture factory. However, after his artistic abilities were discovered, he became a draftsman. He also designed decorations for the ghetto's theater. In 1944 the Germans liquidated the Lodz ghetto...

Acrylic paint on canvas Signed by the artist

Ink, colored marker on heavy paper