Totally Tumarkin
A series of Igael Tumarkin's prints was recently donated to The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art by Sam and Rene Sax of Chicago. Come see them on display for the first time!
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Peter Martin Gregor Heinrich Hellberg (later Igael Tumarkin) was born in 1933 in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. His Jewish mother, Berta Gurevitch, and his stepfather, Herzl Tumarkin, immigrated to then British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel) when he was two.
Among Tumarkin's best-known works are the Holocaust and Revival Memorial in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, and his sculptures commemorating fallen soldiers in the Negev. Tumarkin was also an art theoretician and stage designer. In the 1950s, Tumarkin worked in East Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. Upon his return to Israel in 1961, he became a driving force behind the break from the charismatic monopoly of lyric abstraction there. Tumarkin created assemblages of found objects, generally with violent expressionist undertones and decidedly unlyrical color. His determination to "be different" influenced his younger Israeli colleagues. The furor generated around Tumarkin's works, such as the old pair of trousers stuck to one of his pictures, intensified the mystique surrounding him. One of his controversial works is a pig wearing phylacteries (or tefillin, small boxes containing scriptures). A series of Tumarkin prints was recently donated to The Sherwin Miller Museum by Sam and Rene Sax of Chicago. Come see them on display for the first time!
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