Lot 69: q - ASAF BEN ZVI B.1953

signed and titled in Hebrew and dated 1989 on the reverse

66 1/2 by 62 1/4 in.<br><br>169 by 158cm

oil on canvas

Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, Asaf ben Zvi: Remnants of the Day, 1990, plate 37-f

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION IN ISRAEL

Gideon Ofrat refers to the work of Asaf Ben Zion as follows: "Heirs of the post modernist pluralism included Bezalel graduate Asaf Ben Zvi...who became known in the eighties. Organic silhouettes composed the enormous abstract and figurative paintings that he exhibited at Tel Aviv Museum in 1990. The large series of works conveyed his interest in nature...and ecological events...but also in intimate events, private environments, and personal objects." (Gideon Ofrat, One Hundred Years of Art in Israel, 1998, p.333)
In the 1990 Tel Aviv Museum exhibition catalogue Ellen Ginton writes that the "Leitmotif that has informed Ben-Zvi's work from the outset is the circle, or cyclical movement. Circles and arcs... appear in most of the artist's creations, both in their concrete, figurative form and in a more abstract, metaphoric sense. They point to the connection between the center- any center- and the other components of the picture which spread out from the circle like ripples... In Letter and Moth the entire pictorial space turns on circles, recalling the halo of light around the lamps and stars in van Gogh's night paintings." (Ellen Ginton quoted in Asaf Ben Zvi: Remnants of the Day, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art (exhibition catalogue), 1990).