Avigdor Arikha

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Arikha, Avigdor (b Rădăuţi, 28 Apr. 1929). Romanian-born Israeli painter, draughtsman, printmaker, designer, and writer on art who has worked mainly in France. Initially he made his name as a book illustrator, then from 1957 to 1965 he was primarily an abstract painter, working in an Art Informel vein. Between 1965 and 1973 he abandoned painting for drawing and etching, his work of this period including a series of portraits of the writer Samuel Beckett, who was a close friend. When he resumed painting in 1973, he concentrated on working from the life, his subjects including landscapes, interiors, still-lifes, and portraits, among which are a few commissioned portraits (Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, 1983, NPG, Edinburgh). Such works have won him a reputation as one of the leading figurative painters of his day. Arikha has also written on art and organized exhibitions at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts on the work of Poussin (1982) and Ingres (1986).