Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing original paintings by Joseph Kossonogi.
Please call (917) 749-4557 or email us at info@beloosesky.com
Joseph Kossonogi (Hebrew: יוסף קוסונוגי; born 1908, died 1981) (also Yosef Kossonogy) was an Israeli painter.
Joseph Kossonogi was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1908. After studies at the Berlin Academy of Art and advanced studies in France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv in 1926. There he formed the collective of young painters known as Massad.
In 1929, the Massad group had its first exhibition and, in 1935, the group's members joined the Israel Association of Painters and Sculptors. Kossonogi had one-man shows at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1944 and 1954, in which years he was a co-recipient of the Dizengoff Prize in painting. In 1956, Kossonogi joined the Artists' Colony in Safed. In 1958, the former president of France Vincent Auriol began collecting his work. Kossonogi won the Histadrut Prize in 1966 and the Nordau Prize in 1976. He settled in Safed in 1956.
Joseph Kossonogi's paintings reflect a very personal style based on lightness of touch and a dream-like element in his composition; at the same time he has retained the figurative expressionist approach. Kossonogi's favorite subjects are landscapes, interiors, women and group compositions. Colour figures strongly in Kossonogi's oeuvre. He was preoccupied with the bright sun of Eretz Israel and its effect on the lands, crops, and lives of Jewish settlers and native Arabs. Israeli art critic Gideon Ofrat writes of the artist's oeuvre: "Kossonogi launched his career with romantic watercolours rich in brown and green staining; subsequently, under the influence of Raoul Dufy, they grew lighter and focused on the poetical effects of transparency and fluidity." Kossonogi's focus on light and colour was likely inherited from the European influences that marked his formative period, notably Henri Matisse and André Derain. Along with important Israeli watercolourists Mordechai Avniel and Shimshon Holzman, Kossonogi was considered a master of the aquarelle medium.
He received many awards and regularly exhibited his painting sinternationally. Many of his paintings have been acquired by museums and private collections in Israel and abroad.
Joseph Kossonogi died in 1981.
TIMELINE
1937 Dizengoff Prize, Tel Aviv
1944 Dizengoff Prize, Tel Aviv
1950 Dizengoff Prize, Tel Aviv
1950 Amsterdam, Kunstzal Vanleer
1952 Jewish Painters in Paris
1953 Solo show Tel Aviv Museum
1954 Dizengoff Prize, Tel Aviv
1954 Solo Show Jerusalem
1957 Israel Artists, USA & Canada
1961 Museum of Modern Art, Haifa
1962 Helena Rubinstein's Museum
1963 Bezalel Museum, Jerusalem
1966 Exhibited in Sao Paulo, Brazil
1966 International Exhibition Prize, Tokyo, Japan
1967 Histadruth Prize
1976 Nordau Prize for Art