This exhibition, Six Before the War, accompanies the exhibition of Hayuta Bahat at the Museum of Art, Ein Harod. It offers a renewed encounter with the work of young artists in Israel in the late ’50s and through the ’60s, until the Six-Day War.
The exhibition presents a few of the first generation of abstract artists in Israel, immigrants many of whom were the teachers of the younger generation: Wexler, Zaritsky, Stematsky and others.
It might seem that the victory of the abstract in those years was absolute, but that was not the case. A return to figurative orientations in the art world at that time was also being supported by art critics who had from the start objected to abstract art in the name of local national identity as projected in the figurative. The artists being presented at this exhibition in Ein Harod believed that the policy of the Tel Aviv Museum, directed by Haim Gamzu, and the policy of the Ministry of Education and Culture, championed a return to nostalgic national symbols and images from the world of Jewry, and they organized themselves to create conditions that would enable artists to create the art that in their view was relevant to the time.
There were very few women artists who consistently exhibited large-scale abstract painting. Hayuta Bahat was one of those few. She had close ties with artists such as Aika Brown, Itzhak Danziger, Igael Tumarkin, and others.
Artists Represented in the Exhibition:
Alima, Shimon Avni, Arie Azene, Joav BarEl, Matti Basis, Aika Brown, Yair Garbuz, Moshe Kupferman, Lea Nikel, Igael Tumarkin, and others.