Avigdor Arikha

Avigdor Arikha was one of the most independent-minded artists of the twentieth century. In 1965, at the height of a successful career as an abstract painter, he suddenly stopped painting to return to drawing from life, in order to assuage a 'violent hunger in the eye' released by his experience of the great Caravaggio exhibition at the Louvre that year. When he returned to painting in 1973, it was to begin a series of intensely observed portraits, nudes, and still lifes for which he is known...See more

Avigdor Arikha was one of the most independent-minded artists of the twentieth century. In 1965, at the height of a successful career as an abstract painter, he suddenly stopped painting to return to drawing from life, in order to assuage a 'violent hunger in the eye' released by his experience of the great Caravaggio exhibition at the Louvre that year. When he returned to painting in 1973, it was to begin a series of intensely observed portraits, nudes, and still lifes for which he is known worldwide. See less