Moshe Gershuni b. 1936

Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Moshe Gershuni, Works 1987-1990, 1990, n.n.

In this work, Gershuni, one of Israel's leading contemporary artists, has executed a dramatic statement in just a few brush strokes and in three basic colors. "This is one of a series of several dozen paintings in black, green and white. In the earlier paintings, the earth is green, the sky is black and the central figure, suggesting a cypress tree, a candle flame in the wind or a ghost, is created by a sweeping erasure of the liquid paint. Several secondary erasures or scratches in the paint, and the addition of a white patch, sharpen the tension created by the lighting. In other paintings in this series more trees appear, the later works becoming more and more abstract. The cypress tree, which is also a candle flame, has appeared in Gershuni's paintings since the early eighties, in explicit reference to van Gogh. Here, too, the cypress tree at night is a moif borrowed from van Gogh, but it is placed in the Romantic context of the sublime in nature, and even more so here we have the attraction to the darkness. As in Fuseli, Turner, Blake, Friedrich and Goya, there is here a powerful tension between dark areas and areas illuminated by concentrated light, often a sort of inner light emanating from the tree flame itself." (Itamar Levy, Moshe Gershuni, Works 1987-1990, exhibition catalogue, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1990)