Artist: Moshe Gat (Israeli, born Haifa, 1935)
Title: Yemenite Mother and Sister, 1964
Medium: Oil on canvas
Framed size: 36 in H x 27 in W (91.4 x 68.6 cm)
Image size: 28 in H x 19 in W (71.1 x 48.3 cm)
Signature: Signed by the artist, lower edge, dated 64 as photographed
Framing: Framed, dark wood frame with gilt inner liner, as photographed
Condition: Good
Verso: Sylvia Cordish Fine Art appraisal label, dated January 1, 1995, giving the title, date, medium, size and signature, and valuing the work at 3500 dollars at that date
This expressive 1964 oil painting shows a woman in a dark dress holding a child close against a warm, ochre-brown ground. The figures are built up with thick, tactile paint, their faces turned toward one another, and the child wears dark clothing with light socks. The dark wood frame with its gilt inner liner suits the painting's warm palette and period character. The verso photographs show the stretcher, hanging wire and the appraisal label, and no inscribed title is visible on the canvas itself apart from that documented title.
Keywords: Moshe Gat, Israeli art, Yemenite Mother and Sister, 1964, signed oil painting, mother and child, figurative painting, Expressionist, Bezalel, Haifa, Israeli modern art, framed oil on canvas.
Biography: Moshe Gat, painter and printmaker, was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1935. In 1952 he began to study at the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem. From 1958 to 1960 he was in Mexico, where Mexican figurative painting influenced him and where he studied graphic techniques including colored woodblock printing, copper engraving and lithography. He taught art and mathematics at schools run by the Mexican Jewish community and built his career as an artist, mounting several solo shows during that period. In the early 1960s he moved to the United States, returned to Haifa in 1962, and in the late 1960s moved to Old Jaffa. His early work exemplified the social realism of the 1950s, with many paintings of laborers and other members of the working class; his Seamstresses of 1954, for example, is described as a realistic portrayal imbued with political overtones. In the 1960s he made many ink drawings and etchings of children and folkloristic characters. He taught at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1963, received an Education Scholarship for Studies Abroad from the Norman Foundation in 1957, and a scholarship from the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris in 1967. Sources consulted by name: Annex Galleries biography, from the Information Center for Israeli Art, and Invaluable auction records.