Moshe Kupferman

Untitled, 1989, mixed media on paper, 57×77 cm. signed and dated.

Estimated price: $2,000 - $3,000

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About: Moshe Kupferman

Moshe Kupferman was born in Poland in 1926, his family members were textile merchants. During the Second World War, Kupferman was deported with his family, and spent the years throughout the war running away. The experiences he had gone through during that time were strongly expressed in his artistic works. As he immigrated to Israel in 1948, he became one of the founders of Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, a kibbutz he was a member of until his death in 2003. Kupferman's work is based on firm lines of fixed patterns. The colors of these elaborate shapes are usually gray, silver and purple, sometimes with a green splash. The viewer reacts with a strong emotional response precisely because of Kupferman's harsh set of rules regarding his work’s shapes and colors. Kupferman's abstract and serious paintings are formed in a way of layers and strata, he draws and erases with measured and precise brushstrokes, as the shapes vary between parallel lines, grid, X shapes, winding lines etc. Kupferman used to start painting by first covering the entire canvas with a layer of green paint, next he would engrave or paint shapes on it, adding and subtracting color. At the beginning of his career, his works depicted wire fences which emerged from his war memories, and although they gradually became more abstract and geometrical, his paintings still contained memories of the war. Kupferman's artistic handling of the Holocaust was done in a manner of restraint, resistance, camouflage and repression. It is not easy to digest Kupferman's paintings, and it takes concentration and effort to decipher his works. However, the tension and emotion stored in his works are revealed to those who are willing to observe and dedicate time in order to try and reach the essence of it, as if interpreting a song. During his lifetime, Kupferman has exhibited dozens of solo exhibitions in Israel and abroad (including at the Tel Aviv Museum, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Museum of Art at Ein Harod). He also won the Israel Prize for Painting in 2000. Kupferman's paintings are in great demand and a record price for his paintings was broken three times during Tiroch’s auctions: In 2012, the painting 'The Rift and Time' was sold at a record price of $ 65,000, and in 2013 that record broke when a painting from 1967 was sold at a price of $ 78,000 during a Tiroche auction.