Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing paintings or drawings by Joseph Zaritsky.
Please call (917) 749-4557 or email us at info@beloosesky.com
Joseph Zaritsky, was an Israeli painter, born in 1891 in the Ukraine. In 1923 Zaritsky immigrated to the Land of Israel and settled in Jerusalem. A year later his family followed. Zaritsky was one of the initiators of the first exhibition of Israeli artists in the Tower of David. From 1927 he served as the chairman of the Painters and Sculptors Association in Israel.
Joseph was one of Israel's greatest artists and one of the early promoters of modern art in the Land of Israel both during the period of the Yishuv (the body of Jewish residents in the Land of Israel before the establishment of the State of Israel) and after the establishment of the State.
In the early years, Zaritsky painted watercolor urban landscapes and over time his work became gradually more expressive. Zaritsky developed a modern style of painting called "Lyrical Abstraction’.
The exhibition "The Bezalel National Museum" in 1930 placed him firmly in the public consciousness as a modernist artist. Between 1932 and 1933, Zaritsky opened an art studio adjoining the basement of the home where he lived on 18 Mapu Street. Among the artists who came to his studio were Yehiel Krize, Arie Aroch, etc. Nonetheless, the studio did not last long, and Zaritsky was destined to earn his living in the future, for the most part, from the real estate he owned.
From 1949-1951 he taught art in Kibbutz Yehiam and Naan. The open countryside inspired him to create a series of watercolor drawings. In 1948 Joseph Zaritsky was one of the founders of the "New Horizons" art group. On November 9th, 1948 the new group mounted an exhibition of 18 member artists in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, under the name "New Horizons.". While artists such as Yohanan Simon, Moshe Castel, and Marcel Janco dealt with Zionist and Jewish symbolism, Zaritsky chose for the exhibition an abstract still life influenced by the cubist painter Georges Braque. In 1954 Zaritsky traveled to Europe for over two years. In Paris he was impressed by the blossoming of two-dimensional painting, versus illusory- figurative painting.
In series created between the years 1964-1974 there is an increasing distancing from realistic description, and a more abstract composition and structure of the painting. From the early Seventies, Zaritsky spent every summer in a studio in Kibbutz Tsuba, where he painted a simplification of the landscape in watercolors. During the Eighties, he created a series of paintings, some of monumental sizes, based on works by artists such as Goya, Picasso, Chagall and others.
Joseph Zaritsky died in 1985 in Tel Aviv.
EDUCATION
1910-14 Art Academy, Kiev
TEACHING
1932-33 Opened studio in the cellar of his home in Rehov Mapu, Tel Aviv. From
1949-51 He taught art in Kibbutz Yehiam and Naan.
AWARDS and PRIZES
1942 Dizengoff Prize
1951 Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture, Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa
1959 The Israel Prize, Ministry of Education and Culture
1960 Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture, Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa
1968 Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1982 Worthy of Tel Aviv - Jaffa