Joseph Zaritsky
1891 - 1985

1891 - 1985
Untitled, 1969, Oil on canvas, 155x150 cm, Signed and dated. Provenance: Estate of Rivka Shachf / Shmaryahu and Alice Shenkar Collection. This fine painting was created in the year 1969. A somewhat less meticulous twin painting of this one, appears in the beginning of chapter 14 in a book about Zaritsky (Massada, Tel Aviv, 1987, p. 197), written by the late Mordecai Omer. It appears once more later in that same chapter (p. 201). According to the text based on the artist’s own words: this time period is of “paintings based on views through the windows of Tel Aviv”, in which “on the one hand, one can find the construction, control, logic and rational perfection that characterize the Apollonian element of Zaritsky’s expression, and on the other hand these works - especially their brush strokes - are dominated by Dionysian forces: with spontaneity, chaos, emotion and candor, with the effluence of the subconscious, with terms of creative energy...” (p. 198). But is it indeed a view out of a window? Out of a Tel Avivian window? Very doubtful. Much more convincing is the recognition that Zaritsky continued to be loyal to the basic pattern he did not let go of since 1949, since the paintings of Yehiam. Because this very painting should be placed next to the painting According to Yehiam (oil colors, 1952), in which the right part of the canvas is also dominated by a large reddish-brown stain, a stain that is met in return by an open green space to its left, scattered with brown strocks dashed with white. Therefore, it is important to return to Zaritsky’s words in connection with Yehiam’s series, according to Zaritsky ”a topographic landmark served as the source of the monumental red bloc, which lies safely between to the right of the bluish-green spots and in between them. This bloc was the Fortress of Yehiam according to Zaritzky (...). The remains of the fortress are man’s seal in nature, connected to nature with all of its terrains and manifestations; (...) A symbiosis between past and present, (...) a historical presence immortalized, and by which transformed from a historical event to a mythical center” (p. 148-147). Still, even after 20 years since Zaritsky’s guided seminar at the kibbutz (a kibbutz newly formed on the same ground which was yet to heal from a terrible and bloody battle), he remained committed to the two-toned, two-valued and two-spatial tension and of course to an aerial map-like photography view that overlooks the landscape of the kibbutz and the western Galilee. Blocks of greenery and rocky hills are ”nature’s” response to the hot and powerful mass of ”culture”. Zaritsky’s spontaneous and direct brushstroke delineates itself - as in ancient times - in ”rational” angles that ensure control over the large space of the landscape as well as the canvas’. Ofakim Hadashim (”New Horizons”) had already completed its career six years ago. Tel Aviv already experienced the youth of Ten-Plus’s Pop Art, but 78-year-old Zaritsky was still at it: the leader of the Israeli avant-garde, who since his arrival in Israel in 1923 has stuck to his old formative values. These are the main points of his faith. Within a year, Zaritsky’s Tzova time period would begin, but again - ”the red stain, which had become an abstract reference to the crusader ruins of the Yehiam landscapes, will again serve as an energetic and atmospheric center to the landscapes of Tzova” (P. 206). Yehiam is of the great indicators of Zaritsky’s paintings. Gideon Ofrat