Art News

Beloved Israeli Artist Avigdor Arikha Dies at 81 in Paris

Romanian-born Israeli painter Avigdor Arikha poses with his oil painting 'Ana in Orange and Blue' during the presentation of a retrospective exhibition of his work at Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain.

PARIS (AP).- Israeli

artist Avigdor Arikha, who learned the power of art as a boy during the
Holocaust when he sketched scenes from a concentration camp onto
salvaged scraps
of paper, has died in Paris. He was 81. Romanian-born Arikha, a painter,

draftsman and printmaker, went on to become one of Israel’s most
important
contemporary artists, imbuing his portraits and scenes of daily life — a
red
umbrella against a wall, an overflowing bookshelf, a jumble of bottles
in a
cabinet — with enigmatic, disconcerting beauty.
The artist, who

abandoned abstract art for figurative work in the 1960s, was well-known
for
portraits of subjects including Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother,
actress
Catherine Deneuve and his close friend, writer Samuel Beckett. He also
produced
many probing portraits of himself and his wife, poet Anne Atik.