Lot 218: Zvi Ribak b. 1910 , Synagogue beneath the Western Wall oil on canvas

signed oil on canvas

measurements 31 ½ in. by 28 1/2 in. alternate measurements 80 by 72 cm.

Menachem Michaelson, Zvi Ribak A Jewish Artist, Israel, 1990 n.n.

Purchased directly from the artist by the present owner

Born in Zhitomir in 1910 to a family of scholars and writers, Ribak's talent was discovered at an early age. For the artist, painting became a journey into an inner world of self expression. In Zvi Ribak A Jewish Artist, Jay Weinstein writes: "Art, the distillation of human hope, a balm to the physical and psychic wounds which must be healed in order that life can go on - this is Ribak's passion. In it he recaptures the vanished world of his youth, crystallizing elements of his life - religion, science, warfare - until all are ground up in the mortar of experience, becoming the pigments with which he invests his canvas with the colors and tonalities he seeks." Having lived through pogroms and the Second World War, Ribak came to Eretz Israel in 1948 and eventually settled in Bnei Brak.