Reuven Rubin

Still life with Red Shoes, 1920s’,
Oil on canvas, 61X46 cm.
Signed.
The authenticity of the painting has been confirmed by Ms. Carmela Rubin, Reuven Rubin Museum, Tel-Aviv.

This is another early oil painting by Reuven from the time he had just came to Israel (1923) wishing to become naturalized in the local view. This is evidenced by more than anything by the pair of red slippers, which not only emphasize their presence in the room, but also their relative size with the rest of the connector. Maybe they represent the painter who is observing his new environment and the present absenteeism.

Indeed, the red slippers concept will repeat itself in different versions in his self and family portraits from his first decade in Israel. in all, the red slippers (Anaphylaxis is the Greek term that is also naturalized in Hebrew for soft slippers made of felt) were designed to highlight the yearning for roots and the feeling of home and identity which was a burden to that generation, the generation that had "the pain of two homelands" as the poet Leah Goldberg had referred to at that time.

Reuven was enchanted by the bright Mediterranean light, by the blue skies that clouds sailed in them like fish swimming in the sea and from eastern symbols in the spirit of orientalist romance that was prevalent in Europe in the 19th century and echoed to the first half of the 20th century. So is the minaret (the muezzin mosque tower) towering over the white domes of the buildings and also the Arabian straw stool on which a glass vase with a green branch and a yellowish fruit (watermelon or melon?) Are prominently placed. All of these items, which look out through the opening to the balcony and to the landscape, testify to the wish of the new and primordial world in its simplicity (see, the implicit vegetation) typical of Reuven’s paintings of that decade.

This formal element of image within image refers also to the dialectic of the interior and exterior as part of the interference process in the New World. The "Still Life" items, the fruit and vase on the balcony (or on the windowsill in other paintings), act as intermediaries between the outside and the inside. Notice the parallel between the round shape of the fruit on the stool and the white stone domes, between the vertical of the blue vase and the protruding sky of the muezzin tower, and at least color wise, the parallel between the slippers and red shingles on the roof of the house overlooking in the distance. Reuven, connects the interior with the outside, and thus his painting expresses not only what he sees, but also his inner self in the sense of the feeling that the view evokes in him.

The duplication in the composition seems intended – even implicitly – to confirm the "artificial" and illusory nature of the work of art, which even as a reflection of realistic mirrors, such as the painters highlights, it has an independent existence and is separated from them.

Reuven took this painting with him when he traveled to the United States for the second time in 1928, to exhibit it along with many others in an exhibition in New York. The painting remained there. what remains in Reuven’s collection was a black and white photograph of the painting. having been hidden in a private collection in New York for nine decades, the painting is now being rediscovered in its natural surroundings and in its many colors.

Carmela Rubin.

Estimated price: $100,000 - $150,000

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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.