Interview with the israeli naive painter Raphael perez in his Solo exhibition " color Intoxication" on QU Art museum Suzhou China
question: As an Israeli artist, how does Israeli culture influence your art?
Answer: I was born in Jerusalem and lived there until my twenties - in the paintings of the city of Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel, there are motifs of religious Jews praying, synagogues, and paintings that depict "Jerusalem as the centre of the three religions" Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with the important religious sites for each religion - The Western Wall - for the Jews, the Church of the Sepulchre for the Christians, Al Aqsa Mosque for the Muslims, it is admittedly a conflicted city and full of conflicts, but in the paintings I try to bring a kind of optimistic view of the future of connection between Jews and Arabs.
I have lived in Tel Aviv since 1995 and the liberal, secular city is reflected through the paintings bathed in light and without clouds, Israel is a Mediterranean country with a stretch of coast that borders the desert and there are almost no clouds during the year so there is an expression of clean Israeli light, strong sun almost all year round, Tel Aviv It is a city only 114 years old, it was only founded in 1909, so most of the tall buildings depicted in it are skyscrapers from the last thirty years and the low buildings are from the 1920s to the 1950s, when there was construction in the German Bauhaus style, and Tel Aviv is defined by UNESCO as the "White City" where there are The largest concentration in the world of 4000 Bauhaus buildings, (Shanghai and China also have quite a few Bauhaus buildings) Tel Aviv also has the oriental style of architecture that also combines oriental motifs and arches that also exists in a small part of the iconic buildings in Tel Aviv when the architectural idea of this style was a combination of East and West Through the colourfulness of the urban landscape and the unique Israeli light, I want to bring something from the warm, optimistic Israeli temperament and character.
Israel is ranked 4-6 in the global happiness index, despite the complex security struggle that Israel has been in since its foundation, the Israeli public is warm, energetic, direct, a bit brash, and daring and this can also be seen in the vitality of raising children and a family - Israel is the country with the most children per family in the developed countries... (3.7 per family) and this has even increased in recent years... Israelis put the couple and the family at the centre, therefore there is a motif of couples and families with children, I want to express in this congestion the fact that Israel is a dense, intense, young country, a happy and vibrant start-up nation.
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question: Can you discuss your artistic process, from concept to creation? What are your inspirations?
Answer: I worked for 15 years with children and was influenced by their naive and spontaneous creativity.
In the working process of the naive urban paintings, I first do research on each and every city that I paint and discover the iconic low and tall buildings from old times to contemporary modern times, choose buildings with a special shape, or buildings that have meaning for the country and the city, rebuild the city with the painter in the centre who stands with a canvas and paints the urban landscape in front of him, usually there are two gardeners with girls holding the flag of the country I am painting, and couples of men and women kissing or families with children, I plan the cities with boulevards of flowers, low bushes, boulevards of trees, after them, I put low buildings and icons, behind them the tops of big trees and behind them towers and skyscrapers, in the sky in some of the paintings I put balloons, kites or if it's at night then stars, or fireworks and lanterns to emphasize the light and shadow... I use acrylic paints on canvas, there are also series of paintings with bright colours, and I like the use of contrasting colours, mainly red on top of the green lawns and the buildings in warm colours of red, orange, yellow, pink against the background of the green trees and the blue sky, very bright colours that bring in a lot of light, optimism, joy.
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question: What do you hope people take away from your art?
Answer: In the paintings of the urban landscape, I want everyone to see, identify, and connect with the history and experience of the physical place where they live, that they see the development of their country through the costumes, the ancient iconic buildings, with the contemporary skyscrapers.
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question: The works in this exhibition are on canvas, board, and paper, what materials do you prefer to work with and why?
Answer: I like to work with a variety of materials and techniques... and to express my various skills. The large naive paintings are only in acrylic colours on canvas, in the past I painted realistic paintings of couples and flowers, and they were in oil colours on canvas. There is a large series of artist's books where I work with acrylic paints, ink, markers, pencils, pens,
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question: Is there an artwork in this exhibition that you feel particularly connected to? Can you share the story behind it? Or is there a particular story you would like to share with the audience?
Answer: My favourite painting in the exhibition is the painting of the city of Suzhou with the water canals and the bonsai trees, in this painting and others I created about cities in China I did research work before, first on the traditional Chinese costumes, the traditional folk temples, Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian temples, Chinese means of transportation Antiquities such as carriages, rickshaws, ships decorated with dragons, ancient Chinese statues, trees that are characteristic of China such as the bonsai, I really liked the water canals that give a feeling of Venice of the Far East, with the special lanterns, the old city of Suzhou is like a beautiful and magical village inside A rich urban landscape, in the centre of the painting I put the famous temple of the city and behind you can see the business centre with the skyscrapers and the famous skyline of the city, I have a desire to combine old with new that brings the glorious tradition of the Chinese people with innovation, progress, and the skyscrapers that make the China to the most influential empire and country in the world ... in the coming decades ...
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question: Can you tell us about your initial thoughts and ideas for the creation of landscape series? Regarding the painting “Raphael Perez after Reuven Rubin”, could you please share your inspiration and the story behind the creation?
Answer: The painter Reuven Rubin, born in 1893, is one of the most famous painters in Israel, he belongs to a group of several artists called the "national Israeli artists" who painted the landscapes of Israel before its establishment in the twenties and thirties of the last century, paintings in a naive, romantic style, the reality was the opposite, these were days of difficulties Huge economic hardships, poverty, days before the establishment of the state, riots and violence by Arabs against Jews, and in Europe the extermination of a third of the Jewish people in the world, the murder of 6 million Jews, only a few of whom escaped and survived the inferno of the Holocaust.. The Jewish community in Israel was small and faced many challenges and had to transmit optimism to herself, to survive the difficult times, through painting the artists tried to paint an idealization and a shared life between Jews and Arabs, a conflict that exists to this day, and I also have a huge series of naive paintings that deal with the idealization of a shared life.
In the tribute painting to Reuven Rubin, on the right side, you see the Muslim community with traditional clothing, a shepherd, olive trees, Arab villages, and donkeys as their main means of transportation, on the left side of the painting you see the kibbutzniks, the beginning of modern, developed agriculture, belief in Hebrew work and the Jewish labourer who paved roads and build his country... I dedicated five paintings from the tribute series to the five national Israeli artists including Reuven Rubin, Nahum Gutman, Moshe Castel, Israel Peladi, and Yohanan Simon, these artists are the most precious in Israeli art because of the naive and optimistic vision they transmitted in their works, I dedicated a painting to each artist Only one in which I included between 30-50 of his famous works and of course built it with the optimistic colours and symmetrical compositions that are characteristic of me...
These painters are the source of inspiration and I feel obliged to continue their artistic path in the special language I developed...
