Asim Abu Shakra 1961-1990

Collection of the arist's family

Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Asim Abu Shakra, 1994, p. 27, no. 9, illustrated in color

Asim Abu Shakra was born in Um el Fahm in 1961.  In 1982 he moved to Tel Aviv and studied at Kalisher, the Tel Aviv School of Art, where he also taught between 1987-1988. Following a severe illness, Abu Shakra died in 1990 at the age of 28. The following year a memorial exhibition of his works was held at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and in 1994, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art mounted a solo exhibition of his work.

In reference to Abu Shakra's work Ellen Ginton states that he "conducted a dialogue primarily with Expressionism, more precisely with the early German Expressionism and that of the late 1970s. The juxtaposition of animals and airplanes (nature and technology) in his early paintings recalls the work of the new German Expressionists … The affinity towards German Expressionism, particularly in its late Berlin phase, as represented by Helmut Middendorf who painted planes over a burning city.,.., brings to mind an analogy that is not only stylistic, but also socio political – the expressive image adopted by the outsider, the other… As a graduate of Kalisher, Abu-Shakra was also outside the more intellectual mainstream of contemporary Israeli art. Although at first glance his modernism might be considered anachronistic… the quality of his painting and its political and social, as well as psychological, aspects sustain his relevancy…The crucifixion – death – [the image of the plane can sometimes be compared to the symbolism of a cross in Abu Shakra's works] expressed in Abu Shakra's paintings moved from the political to the personal, from the lament of the Palestinian, to the lament of the exile in Tel Aviv, and finally to the lament of his own untimely death." (Ellen Ginton, "The Asim Abu-Shakra Passion", Asim Abu Shakra, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1994, page 90).