Lot 112
  • 112

Yaacov Agam b. 1928

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Description

  • Yaacov Agam
  • High Blue Lake View
  • signed Agam (lower right)
  • multicolored tape on chrome metal mounted to metal support
  • 35 3/4 by 75 1/8 by 3 3/4 in.
  • 90.5 by 191 by 9.5 cm.
  • Executed in 1977.

Provenance

Private Collector, Chicago, commissioned from the artist

Catalogue Note

Yaacov Agam, the son of a celebrated rabbi of legendary piety, was interested in the spiritual possibilities of art from the very start of his career. Consistently questioning the nature of the artist-observer relationship, Agam aroused the keen interest of major surrealists of an earlier generation, who were amongst his most keen supporters. Discussing his work, Agam notes: "I have tried to create painting that exists not only in space, but also in time, where it develops one after the other, in a continual renewal." (Yaacov Agam quoted in Haim Gamzu, "Time and Space in the Work of Yaacov Agam", Homage to Yaacov Agam, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1980, page 113). Varda Steinlauf discusses a similar work from the collection of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art: "Yaacov Agam's work is based on structural and visual concepts that are encapsulated in seemingly simple compositions. Agam defines his works as "transformational" - that is, as composed of forms that are transformed before the viewer's eyes. The movement in them is illusory, and is the product of the viewer's movement as he advances from one side of the work to the other. Every step reveals new combinations of forms and colors and the resulting impression is that the image itself is in motion. The arrangement of colorful forms is based on musical analogies, such as polyphony." (Varda Steinlauf quoted in Mordechai Omer (ed.),  Highlights from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2005, page 309).