Menashe Kadishman, famed Israeli artist, dies at 82

Kadishman died after he was hospitalized at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Menashe Kadishman (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Menashe Kadishman
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Menashe Kadishman, the world-renowned painter, sculptor, and Israel Prize laureate, died on Friday at the age of 82.
Kadishman died after he was hospitalized at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.
Over the past 60 years the Tel Aviv-born Kadishman created a significant body of sculptures, paintings, conceptual pieces and graphic prints.
Awarded the Israel Prize in 1995, Kadishman was, most of the time, an establishment favorite who gained international recognition and played a significant role in advancing the cause of Israeli art.
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art presented a long overdue, wide-ranging retrospective of Kadishman's works, assembled chronologically. They date from his earliest student trials to his latest unstretched canvases based on important 19th-century paintings, mostly by Van Gogh and Millet.
Kadishman's impressive career began with a solid foundation in sculpture. After studying with Moshe Sternschuss and Rudi Lehmann, he attended St. Martin's and the Slade in London during the early 1960s, where he was properly introduced to the tools and the aesthetics of the trade as indicated in this show by a group of hand modeled bronze maquettes of distinctive archaic altars and arches.
Soon after attending the classes of Anthony Caro, his work took a constructivist, near minimalist, turn.
During his minimalist phase Kadishman investigated the possibility of freeing geometric forms from their apparent weightiness by creating a vision of mass floating in space.
Gil Goldfine contributed to this report.