Michael Gross 1920-2004

Mordechai Omer, Michael Gross, 1993, no. 259, p. 10,  illustrated in color

Original canvas. There is faint craquelure on the top white area. Overall, this work is in very good condition. This work has not yet been examined under UV light.
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Gross was enrolled in the École National Superieur des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the early 1950's. On his return to Israel in 1956, the artist focused on bereavement and empathy with the memory of the fallen. He maintained "No great effort is needed to find a reason for communion or commemoration in Jewish or Israeli history, especially in the '40s and '50s. Death was our legacy...People were killed...In the War of Independence we had many fallen". (Mordechai Omer, Michael Gross, p. 32) Fallen Soldier in a Field, painted in 1964, is a poignant testimony to those whose lives were lost. Gross employs a range of monochromatic colours bisected by a heavier darker structure, cutting across the canvas horizontally. This figure, whose human presence is reduced, lies still and isolated against an expansive, lifeless field, evoking an atmosphere of trauma and mourning.