Reuven Rubin

Mr. and Mrs. George Friedland, Philadelphia

Tel Aviv, Museum of Art, May 1971 (written in another hand on the stretcher)

Sarah Wilkinson, Reuven Rubin, New York, 1980, no. 284, illustrated p. 275

The canvas is unlined. There are minute flecks of pigment loss in the sun at upper right. There is minor abrasion along the bottom edge and the upper left corner due to contact with the frame. Othewise, in generally good condition.
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From the late 1950's, running horses became a favorite subject of Rubin. Sarah Wilkinson writes that that the artist was inspired by the Bedouin horsemen galloping in the desert and these paintings were different than most of the artist's works. "They are not tranquil in spirit, but filled with turbulence, as if the horses, now riderless, are driven onward by unknown forces. He uses color arbitrarily: the horses are in blues, while the background, with a huge moon, is in greens, or the horses are in reds and the background in purples. The horses are delineated by thin contour lines, but so masterly is Rubin's draftsmanship that the forms have real solidity." (Sarah Wilkinson, Reuven Rubin, New York, n.d., p. 91)