Yehezkel Streichmann 1906-1993

Jerusalem, Israel Museum, Yehezkel Streichman Paintings, 1974
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Streichman, Paintings 1942-1975, 1975
Haifa Museum of Art; Beer Sheba, Hanegev Museum; Ein Harod Museum of Art, 1980
New York, Museum of Modern Art

In this painting the artist distances himself from a specific reality and instead uses the material textures of the work to express himself in the abstract manner characteristic of this period. "Because he is no longer bound to painting from reality he can abandon his tendency to describe intimate, close subjects in favor of distant, wide views. The intimate standpoint, the need for physical proximity to the subject, is expressed now in the artist's total physical connection to the material. The thick, tactile and sculptural texture of the painting transforms it into an object, with its own intimate presence, rather than a veil of illusions. The principle of opposites in confrontation which informed Streichman's work is still present in the artist's work of the early 1960s: this time it is the polarization between the far (distant landscapes) and near (material textures), or between the matièriste approach which emphasizes the form created by the arbitrariness of the material and its harsh physicality, and the traditional approach to the use of oil paint, its transparency and application on the canvas." (Yigal Zalmona in Yehezkel Streichman (exhibition catalogue), Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1987).