Auction of Fine Judaica.
Opening highlights stem from venerated Chassidic and Rabbinic leaders, including the Chofetz Chaim, the Satmar Rebbe and the Vishnitzer Rebbe (Lots 1-5).
Among Autograph Letters are those written in Russian by the Lubavitcher Rebbetzin, including inscribed, personal photographs captured shortly before her marriage to the Rebbe (Lots 12-16).
The auction includes a number of rare books that stem from the library of a distinguished European scholar; as well as further offerings that stem from the library of the late Haham Solomon Gaon (1912-94).
Judaic books and manuscripts (non-Hebraic) range from Antisemitica to Zionism, and includes Community Pinkas records, Sephardic and Children's Literature, as well as livres d'artistes.
Utilize the Search-bar to locate books that are of regional interest, including: Australia, China, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Majorca, Poland, Russia, and elsewhere.
The auction includes a further offering of Americana from a distinguished Private Collection. Focusing on Jews in the American Civil War, featuring photographs, autograph letters and printed books (Lots 117-164).
The penultimate portion of the auction features Fine & Graphic Art (Lots 170-188), including canvases by Israeli artists: Moshe Gershuni, Yosl Bergner and Reuven Rubin. Of particular note, is a large, vibrant oil painting by the celebrated Russian-American Chassidic artist Zalman Kleinman, dated 1973 (see lot 179).
An exceptionally rare drawing by the Anglo-Jewish female artist Kate Salaman, c. 1840's, is Lot 176.
The final 20 lots of the sale are 20th-century ceremonial objects including by Agam, Bier, Sugarman and Wolpert and a number of Bezalel-era items (Lots 189-208).
For any and all inquiries please contact Shaya Kestenbaum: jack@kestenbaum.net.
|
LOT 185:
GERSHUNI, MOSHE. “El Male Rahamim” [“God, Full of ...
more...
|
|
|
Start price:
$
4,000
Estimated price :
$6,000 - $9,000
Buyer's Premium: 25%
sales tax: 8.875%
On the full lot's price and commission
Users from foreign countries may be exempted from tax payments, according to the relevant tax regulations
|
GERSHUNI, MOSHE.
“El Male Rahamim” [“God, Full of Mercy.”]
Oil on canvas. Signed by the artist and dated on reverse.
Framed. 23.75 x 23.75 inches; 60 x 60 cm.
Tel Aviv, 1996.
As both artist and teacher, Moshe Gershuni (1936-2017) was a highly visible force, expressing his identity as both an Israeli and as a Jew, in a way no other artist before him had done.
Gershuni was one of the first artists in Israel at the end of the 1960’s to explore highly modernistic, iconoclastic possibilities, creating works which were paradigms of Conceptual art and in the 1970’s extending his art to public performance. As a stimulating teacher in Bezalel, he fueled the imagination of many young artists, especially towards political involvement.
In 1996 Gershuni held a joint exhibition with Raffi Lavie in the Givon Gallery in Tel Aviv. The exhibition was highly regarded, not only because it presented a body of work of two canonical figures in Israeli art, or as it was defined, of ‘local masters turning 60,’ but primarily because of its relationship to Israeli public space.
Gershuni’s works, which included the present canvas with the caption ‘El Male Rachamim, ’ feature large, dark, paint stains, similar to eyes, making use of thick impasto, and is interpreted as a reaction to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The ‘eyes’ motif, creating a basic facial form, possesses a rich iconography. Along with literary references such as Hayim Nahman Bialik’s poem, ‘These hungry eyes that so earnestly seek, ’ or the poetry of Avraham Ben-Yitzhak, Gershuni testified that the eyes came from “there.” “Sometimes I think of the picture of my family from Poland as the source of those eyes. I have in my head a picture of a moving train, and from between the slats, a pair of dark eyes of a little girl or little boy peeps out. The empty eyes followed me around long before I painted them.”
PROVENANCE: The Stanley Batkin Collection; Kestenbaum Sale 71, Lot 27.
EXHIBITED: Jewish Museum, New York. After Rabin: New Works in Israeli Art (1998).
