Yigal Tumarkin

Tumarkin - 1933 - 2021

999 Oil and ...

Tumarkin - 1933 - 2021

999 Oil and plaster on wood, photo 40 * 40 cm, with frame 69 * 69 cm. signed.

Yigal Tumarkin was born in 1933 in Germany, immigrated to Israel at the age of two with his mother and grew up in Tel Aviv. At the age of Tumarkin's army enlisted in the Navy and served as a sabotage instructor, at the same time beginning to create figurines of animals which began to be sold in stores. After his release he began to delve deeper into the art world and went to study sculpture with the artist Rudy Lehman in the artists' village of Ein Hod. In the late 1950s, after a period of several years living in various countries throughout Europe, Tumarkin was exposed to the Dada movement, pop art and avant-garde protest art, and these artistic movements influenced Tumarkin's works significantly. In 1960 he returned to Israel and began sculpting in various scrap and iron, during the Yom Kippur War Tumarkin accompanied IDF forces as a photographer and military reporter.

Yigal Tumarkin's works after his return to Israel constituted a significant change in the landscape of Israeli art, which at the time dealt mainly with abstract and internal emotional expressions. His works, which were based on the assemblage technique, brought to Israeli art expressions of cultural and political protest, alongside influences of pop art. Over the years, poetic images have appeared in his paintings and sculptures, contrasted with blatant and anti-war expressive language, which testify to his deep involvement in Israeli culture and current events. Beyond his main occupation in sculpture, Yigal Tumarkin has over the years created many works in other media such as print, painting and photography. Alongside small works he does a lot to create and place various sculptures and monuments around the country. His thinking for Israeli art is immeasurably essential and therefore he won the Israel Prize for Sculpture for 2004.