AVIGDOR ARIKHA

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 scrapsof 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 inJerusalem mostly by Bauhaus teachers who had escaped Germany, Arikha adopted a modernistapproach, mastering multiple skills and mediums in line with Bauhaus principles.

He moved to Paris to attend the École des Beaux-Arts, where he settled amongst a community ofartists, writers and academics. Although described by Ann Wroe in The Economist as ‘perhaps thebest painter from life in the last decades of the 20th century’ Arikha was an abstract painter until themid-Sixties when, encouraged by his great friend Alberto Giacometti, he found renewed passion inrepresentation. In 1956 he met Samuel Beckett, a close friendship which was to have a profoundimpact on his life (His first daughter, Alba, was named after one of Beckett’s poems). One day in1965, after viewing Caravaggio’s Raising of Lazarus in the Louvre, Arikha felt ‘a violent hunger in theeyes’ and a desire to capture with immediacy, the truth of a person or object in that very moment. Hesubsequently focussed on solely figurative, black and white drawing for a period of eight years,prioritising the act of observation over memory or imagination.

In 1973, Arikha began working in colour again. Partly on the basis of fresco techniques he had beentaught at the Beaux Arts, he created a medium that made paint dry under his hand, forcing him tocomplete each work within a single day. He worked only in natural light, painting urgently with nopreparatory sketches.

Painting often from his top-floor home studio, his subject matter included still-lifes, landscapes,interiors and portraits. The crowded views of Parisian rooftops allowed skilful examination ofperspective and light; as with his still-lifes and portraits that captured social life at the apartmentand the character of his wife, two daughters and remarkable coterie of friends, including SamuelBeckett, Giacometti and Henri Cartier-Bresson, amongst others.

Throughout the eighties and nineties Arikha also rose to prominence as an art historian, lecturingaround the world. He curated exhibitions internationally, including Ingres at the Frick Collection,New York and Poussin at the Louvre, Paris. In 1992 he was commissioned by The BBC to make adocumentary about Velazquez.

Arikha’s work is in public collections worldwide including: British Museum, London, UK; Denver ArtMuseum, Denver, US; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, IT; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,Washington, D.C., US; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, ISR; The Jewish Museum, New York, US; TheMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York, US; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, FR; Musée du Louvre,Paris, FR; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR; National Portrait Gallery,London, UK; Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, UK; Tate, London, UK.He has been awarded many prizes and honorary degrees, and named a Chevalier de la Légiond’honneur in 2005.

Arikha is survived by his wife, two daughters and four grandchildren. His wife, the writer Anne Atik, isone of his most painted subjects along with their two daughters, Alba and Noga, an author/musician, and a historian of ideas respectively.