Sale: 176 Date of sale: 25.01.2020 Item: 55

Reuven Rubin

Jaffa, 1920s, Oil on canvas, 54X65 cm. Signed. The authenticity of the painting has been confirmed by Ms. Carmela Rubin, Rubin Museum, Tel-Aviv. Literature and Exhibitions: • Dreamland – Reuven Rubin and his Encounter with the Land of Israel from the 1920s and 1930s, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, November 2006, p. 81. (Illustrated). • The 1920’s in Israeli Art, Tel Aviv Museum, Curator: Marc Scheps, May – November 1982, p. 168 (Illustrated). This museum painting, one of Reuven Rubin’s best paintings, was painted in 1924, which is a particularly important year for the painter’s professional development, just months after his immigration to Israel in 1923. Yes, he had been here once, when he was 19, and studied less than one year at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. But only this time, at the age of 31, did he experience the challenges of acclimatizing as an immigrant from Romania, experiencing what it is like to encounter a different country and a different culture. Since arriving in Israel, he slowly discovered the local landscape, internalizing the intense local sunlight, becoming acquainted with the local Arabs and their culture. Step by step, he shed over himself the religious, Jewish-Christian mask, which he had been wearing as a “religious artist” since 1919, he then chose his new path: The Israeli and oriental path – allying with the earth, light, and east. The Innocence and the sense of genesis in his paintings from that time were widely spoken of. In 1924 Reuven already resided in Tel Aviv, and for him, the “near east” was Jaffa and Sheikh-Munis. Just before he dedicated himself to the villages of the Galilee, he got drawn back towards Jaffa with more and more paintings of Jaffa. But, lo and behold: not in one of his paintings did Reuven Rubin enter Jaffa and painted it from the inside. In all of his paintings of Jaffa‏, from 1923 to 1925‏, he watches it from a distance, from the outside, whether from the beach and dunes of Tel Aviv, and whether from a route or roadway leading to the city. Thus, paintings from those years named “Jaffa port” represent “the way to” more than the destination itself. Even more so: Reuven’s description of Jaffa port places “obstacles”, in the form of flowerpots and a sheep, between him and the road leading to the port. Only in 1926, in a painting named “Jaffa”, would Reuven approach the city center, but even then – the view of the main road is a view from above, from a gated balcony, and through “obstacles” in the form of a table, a flowerpot plant and a goldfish jar… Now, let us look at the current Jaffa painting: Reuven is further away from Jaffa, of which its few distant rooftops are only visible behind a hill, exotic bushes, a wall and a road in the foreground of the canvas. Reuven was drawn to Jaffa yet simultaneously cautious of it. The small gate in the open wall is far from inviting. Our attention is focused on the fact that Jaffa – the biggest city of Palestine at the time, with about 35,000 Arab residents (after its Jews fled it in the early 1920s) – This metropolitan Arab Jaffa seems like a small town, nothing more. But, most of all, apart from the warm tones, the Arabian women duo, and the primitivism and childish style, our eyes catch the tension between the black ship anchored in the horizon and the two small brown boats lying on the brown ground behind the wall: The black ship is the one that came from far and wide, from across the sea. These small boats are the ones that took the ship’s passengers of it and carried them to shore. Reuven Rubin symbolizes his immigration to and settlement in Israel as a plant among the exotic plants of this new land … a magical painting indeed. Gideon Ofrat

Estimated price: $150,000 - $250,000

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About: Reuven Rubin

Born in Romania in 1893 Rubin is known as a leading prominent Israeli artist to this day. At age 19 he came to the then Palestine and began his studies at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. Less than a year later he left for Paris and enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but had to leave France when the First World War broke out. He whiled the years of the war in his native Romania and then traveled to New York in 1921 where he had an exhibition sponsored by Alfred Stieglitz. Following his return to Europe, in 1923 he returned to Palestine to become one of the founding fathers of Israeli art. Rubin’s early paintings from the 1920s’ seem to portray the “Zionist dream”, indeed, an idealized perception of the Jewish return to the historical homeland. He eagerly depicted the natural sights and the diversified human landscape of the land – traditional devout Jews, secular pioneers and Arabs – his bright vivid colors reflecting the Mediterranean sunlight and bypassing the tensions following the Arab riots at the end of that decade, the awareness to which came only later. Rubin’s style was naïve, inspired by European modernism (most particularly the French Henri Rousseau comes to mind but also Derain and Matisse) and reflecting a child-like enthusiasm vis-à-vis the new life forming around. The local flora and fauna, so often incorporated into his compositions of landscapes and portraits alike, are not merely decorative but rather they symbolize renewal, growth, harmony and above all that newcomer’s quest to instantly feel rooted in the new environment. Rubin’s depictions of Tel Aviv growing on the sand dunes, his panoramic landscapes of Jerusalem, his numerous depictions of the road to Safed, Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, became his trademark. His depictions of the Judean hills and the silvery-green Galilean olive groves became gradually more ethereal, immersed in a mystical atmosphere. In 1973 he was awarded the Israel Prize for his lifetime achievement in art. His paintings hang in the Knesset Building, in the Presidential Residence in Jerusalem, at the Prime Minister’s Residence and offices, in leading Israeli museums and in public and private collections in Israel and abroad. In 1983 The Rubin Museum opened to the public in Rubin’s former family home in Tel Aviv, showcasing his art in particular and Israeli art in general.
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