Outspoken painter, writer, and satirist Yair Garbuz died on Wednesday at age 80.
Garbuz, one of the most prolific and influential artists in Israel, was born in 1945 in Givatayim to parents who immigrated from Poland. He was a member of Kibbutz Kfar HaHoresh. His brothers were the late former MK Aharon Harel, and Alon Garbuz, who ran the Tel Aviv Cinematheque for years.
Garbuz began studying painting with Raffi Lavie, one of the most prominent painters in the Israeli art world, and at the Avni Institute, the second art school established in the country after Bezalel in Jerusalem. He opened his first solo exhibition in 1967, at the age of 22. He also took part in “The Nude Exhibition” of the Tel Aviv group Ten Plus, founded by Lavie, which was an artists’ collective that operated in the 1960s.
Garbuz showed his work at dozens of exhibitions in Israel and all over the world, and also headed the Midrasha Faculty of Arts at Beit Berl College. He also wrote satirical works for the Davar Acher column in the newspaper Davar under the pen name Y. Polani. He received the Sokolov Prize for Journalism in 1993. His humorous writings were collected in several books.
In 2004, he won the Emet Prize in the field of painting, which is awarded under the auspices of the prime minister to those with outstanding achievements in the fields of art, science and culture. In 2015, he won the Rappaport Prize from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Garbuz’s artwork from the late 1960s onward combined influences from American pop art with local imagery.
During the 2015 election campaign, Garbuz drew harsh criticism from both sides of the political spectrum over a speech at a rally in Rabin Square, in which he wondered how a minority of “amulet kissers, idol worshipers, and those who bow down and prostrate themselves on the graves of righteous men” had taken control of Israel. Critics accused Garbuz of condescension, racism, and contempt for other worldviews, and compared his remarks to Dudu Topaz’s 1981 speech for the Labor Party in which he made derogatory remarks against Likud voters of Mizrahi origins.
“I am not one of the cowards and not one of those who fall silent,” Garbuz said in an interview, and insisted he did not regret anything he had said.
Source:
www.jpost.com
