Nira Lubanov is an Israeli artist. Her life story is interwoven in the history of this country. Lubanov was born in Kibbutz Kinneret in the Jordan Valley. It was a kibbutz where all the children wore simple shorts and white tank tops. Barefoot or in brown sandals, they all ate together in the main dining room and slept in the children’s houses, which used to be “shared accommodation.” Lubanov recounts: “Like every little child in the kindergarten in the kibbutz, I was seated with the other kids in front of tables loaded with white paper. At first, I was not aware of my abilities and artistic talents. But as time went by, as a young girl and then in high school, I realized I received special treatment and many compliments for my drawings. It was my first significant experience in the kibbutz, where everyone was equal, even though I knew I was better than the others at drawing, and it encouraged me to make more effort to succeed. I was the one who always drew for events, backstage scenery, and painted at every opportunity.”
In high school, one of Lubanov’s teachers was famed Israeli artist Leo Roth. He made aliyah from Germany in the 1930s and lived all his life in Kibbutz Afikim. There is some influence of Roth in Lubanov’s work, in the way she combines colors and the way she takes care of the figures in her work. Solid characters with clear and defined contours stand at the center of Roth’s work, as well as in part of Lubanov’s. As she says: “Leo Roth taught me to delve deeper into the subject of the material from which the elements appearing in the painting are made, to give expression, to show and emphasize the texture of the dress’s fabric wrapping the body of the painted image, to emphasize the texture of the fruits, as well as the texture of the wooden stand where the fruits are located in the market.”