Collection: Avigdor Arikha   1929 - 2010  Follow artist

Avigdor Arikha (1929-2010) moved from Israel to Paris in 1950 where he was an integral part of the artistic and intellectual life of the city until his death on 29 April 2010. A painter, draughtsman, printmaker and art historian, he is known for working only in natural light and for producing each of his works in one day.

Born into a German-speaking Jewish family, Arikha was deported, in 1941, to a Transnistrian concentration camp, where his father died. He survived thanks to sketches he composed on scraps of paper, depicting the horrors of the holocaust. Those were shown to delegates of the Red Cross, who facilitated his and his sister’s escape.

In 1944, at the age of fifteen Arikha moved to the British Mandate of Palestine. Schooled in Jerusalem mostly by Bauhaus teachers who had escaped Germany, Arikha adopted a modernist approach, mastering multiple skills and mediums in line with Bauhaus principles.