“Transparent as Aquarelle: Early Eretz-Israeli Painting from the Collection of Shmuel and Tamara Givon” is the name of an exhibition opening this month at the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, in homage to Shmuel and Tamara Givon, the founders of the Givon Gallery in Tel Aviv. This selection focuses on the early part of the collection, which began taking shape in the late fifties and includes works by the leading Eretz-Israeli artists – Stematsky, Zaritsky, Kossonogi, Lubin, Stenzel, Giladi, and Abramowicz – from the forties through to the mid-sixties. The drawings and aquarelles to be shown give expression to Tamara and Shmuel Givon’s special connection to the pre-State period and the region of the valleys.
In 1938 Shmuel and Tamara Givon were among the founders of Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in the Beit She’an Valley, and remained members of the kibbutz until 1948. Shmuel Givon was deeply involved in local matters on an everyday basis, serving as mukhtar of the Beit She’an Valley district, the Mandate boundaries of which extended as far as Ein Harod. He spoke Arabic fluently and formed close and complex connections with the district’s Bedouins and its Arab inhabitants. After he moved to Tel Aviv and became an art collector, he expressed his profound feelings for the country and the pioneering period of his life by intensive collecting of early Eretz-Israeli painting. In 1975 he established the Givon Gallery in Gordon Street in Tel Aviv, and during the first decade of its existence he often showed works from his Eretz-Israeli collection and became known as an expert in this field.
Two other exhibitions, showing the later and the avant-garde parts of the Shmuel and Tamara Givon collection, are to be held at the Givon Gallery and at the Givon Art Forum in Tel Aviv.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue, with texts by Tali Tamir and Nimrod Reichmann. The curator of the exhibitions is Tali Tamir.