Landscapes and people of the Land of Israel are the focus of this exhibition of paintings by Ben Zion Magal, which opened together with the publication of a book on his oeuvre. A major portion of his paintings consists of landscapes from the 1940s and 1950s. They represent the local scenery while at the same time express painterly values. Patches and smears of paint, dark and thick contours, and clashes between colors serve to generate an expressive and emotional atmosphere. Yet what sets these landscape paintings apart is their attachment to place, to the ancient Hebrew past and to the Bible. These are embodied by depiction of ancient sites imbued with historical memory alongside rural landscapes and new urban neighborhoods. In the depictions of sea and desert from the 1960s the colors become brighter under the influence of the harsh light and the open views. Nature finds expression in encounters between light, shiny and dazzling yellows of the sun and the sand dunes, the blues of the sky and the murky water, free and rhythmic reflections of color.
Magal also represents the Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel in his paintings from the 1960s and on. They relate to the orientalist genre in Israeli art, characterized by an attempt to bridge between the Hebrew and biblical past and the present. The alluring East is apparent in the depiction of farmers, Bedouins and Arab women with beasts of burden. In some of his paintings Magal expresses an infinite sense of space, ancient glory and intense desert heat. Other paintings display exotic and fantastic colorfulness through the use of shades of blue and turquoise, pink, red and purple like the hues of a spectacular Mediterranean sunset.
The intensity, richness, variety, seriousness and professional skill in Magal’s oeuvre, alongside the joyfulness of creation have produced a substantial and high quality body of work.
Irit Miller
Exhibition Curator
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