Micha Ullman

Acquired directly from the artist

Yigal Zalmona, The Israel Museum, Sands of Time: The Work of Micha Ullman, Jerusalem, 2011, p. 79, illustrated in color in the exhibition catalogue

These works are in excellent overall condition. There are several small surface scuffs and small areas of surface dirt on the rust colored patina.
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Born in Tel Aviv in 1939, Micha Ullman studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem between 1960-1964 and at the Central School for Arts and Crafts, London in 1965. An Israel Prize laureate and a recipient of numerous international honors, the artist is renowned for his subterranean installations as well as for his iron and sand sculptures. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem recently held an important retrospective of Ullman’s sculptures spanning 50 years of the artist’s work. Large scaled versions of the works comprising Ullman’s Containers series (of which the smaller versions are offered here) were splendidly exhibited in the impressive rooms of the recently renewed museum.

Micha Ullman’s works address such universal themes as home and place, absence and emptiness. Midnight, Day and Havdala, incorporate the two most significant materials in the artist’s work, iron and red sand. Ullman feels connected to the earth, that it is a part of him. His years in agricultural school, in the kibbutz and then in the army as well as his philosophical intrigue with digging and with the earth all contribute to this fascination. “Earth is the prime material which Micha Ullman uses to create his works. He digs graves and houses in it, cuts ditches and plants grass and coats his iron sculpture-containers with sand. But he is not an earth artist in the same sense as Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer… For Ullman, earth is sacred and as an artist he handles it with the reverence of a priest.” (Doreet LeVitté Harten in Israeli Art around 1990: BiNationale, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Artist’s House, Moscow, 1990, p. 224).