Magazine

An art life

04/19/2012 10:27 By DAVID STROMBERG

Amnon Ben-Ami described by judges as artist whose works ‘contain within them a provocative and poetic richness.’

Photo by: Courtesy: Bezalel

At any given time there are few truly great artists hiding out of sight. But some artists avoid the public aspect of the art life to focus all the more on the critical questions inherent to art. One such artist is Amnon Ben-Ami – recipient of the newly inaugurated Ilana Elovic Bezalel Prize for Painting, which includes a cash prize of $20,000 as well as an exhibition with catalogue in November at Bezalel’s Jaffa 23 space in Jerusalem’s city center.

Ben-Ami, 56, is a Jerusalem-based painter who has been working within the Israeli art world since the late 1980s but has purposely kept his exposure limited. One of his reasons for keeping such a low profile is so he can focus as much as possible on the art itself. This commitment leads to a host of complications – existential, social, financial – especially when one is raising a family in a city without a single commercial contemporary art gallery. Yet the strength of Ben-Ami’s work comes in part from his power – always present in his work – to turn these very complications into artistic inquiry. And to do this by constantly singling out the visual elements of the most basic objects that surround us.

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An art life

Amnon Ben-Ami described by judges as artist whose works ‘contain within them a provocative and poetic richness.’

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