Born into a lower-middle-class Jewish family - his father Sapsi worked at Philips and his mother Ester ran a haute couture workshop - he paradoxically benefited during the war from the teaching of the greatest Jewish professors excluded from official institutions by anti-Semitism.
Encouraged by his mother in 1949, he abandoned a career as a sports journalist to study at the Bucharest School of Fine Arts. Between 1950 and 1954, he created his first posters and engravings, then participated in various exhibitions from 1955 to 1957 while creating theatrical sets and costumes as an assistant at the Bucharest Theatre Institute.
His international recognition began in 1957 with the Swiss Triennial of Engraving, where he represented Romania. However, in 1958, communist repression hit intellectuals: his first painting exhibition in Bucharest was banned.
The exile of 1959 brought him, after a long European journey, to settle in Israel in 1960. His meeting with Marcel Janco proved decisive, guiding him towards a personal aesthetic search. His marriage to the architect Ruth Schafer in 1960 accompanied a productive period during which he created numerous works for Israeli public buildings and participated in the Warsaw Poster Biennale.
His first Tel Aviv exhibitions in 1967, guided by the sculptor Dani Karavan, launched his international career. His contact with the Parisian gallery Romanet in 1971 preceded his first Parisian and American exhibitions in 1972.
His second marriage in 1985 to the Dutch artist Miriam Speet, whom he met in Maastricht in 1980, enriched his family life with the birth of Boris (1986) and Simon (1988). Since 2013, he has divided his time between Paris and his studio in Châteauneuf-de-Gadagne in the Vaucluse region.
Official recognitions crown his career: Honorary Citizen of Châteauneuf-de-Gadagne and Knight of Arts and Letters in 2019, then Honorary Citizen of Iași in 2023. Critics unanimously underline his ability to "blend the sacred and the profane" in "poetic and mythical symbolism" where the "hieratic characters" evolve on "blue, ochre, golden backgrounds which have the sumptuousness of icons".
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Sonnet 4
