Untitled (Jug), 1991

Raffi Lavie, Untitled (Jug), 1991, gouache and pencil on paper

27.6 x 28.1 cm / 10.8 x 11 inx 11 in

Givon Art Collection

• Excellent
• Signed and dated, bottom right

Raffi Lavie (1937–2007) was a prominent multidisciplinary artist and painter, teacher, and critic with a profound impact on the Israeli art field. As an influential artist and mentor, he had a profound impact on the careers of celebrated artists such as Yair Garbuz, Nurit David, Deganit Berest, and Tamar Geter.

Lavie played a key role in the development of modernism and avant-garde movements in Israel. He founded the Ten + group, a collective that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, challenging traditional local art institutions and offering new perspectives and discourse in the local art scene.

In the early 1960s, Lavie began creating paintings inspired by spontaneous, fast doodles and drawings that were known to be influenced by Aviva Uri. Unlike Uri, he also incorporated elements from children's art and graffiti into his practice. By the late 1960s, he began to integrate photographs, found footage, reproductions, and posters into his work— blending politically charged imagery with various gestures from the world of graphic design, commercial campaigns, and “kitsch” esthetics— exploring them within artistic discourse, while focusing the aesthetics of the ephemeral.

Lavie received the Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1978. His work was highlighted in the 1986 exhibition "The Want of Matter: A Quality in Israeli Art" at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, curated by the renowned Sarah Breitberg-Semel (1947-2022). This exhibition characterized Lavie's practice as raw and critical of social, political, and mythological aspects of Israeli society.

Lavie opposed iconological interpretations of his work, favoring a modernist-formalist approach. He emphasized a formalistic confrontation between the various elements of composition, reflecting his commitment to the Ars Poetica perspective on art.

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