Arie Aroch

Arie Aroch, (Nisselevitch), an Israeli painter and diplomat, was born in 1908, in Kharkov, Russia. He was awarded The Israel Prize for painting in 1971.
Aroch was born to a well-to-do family and received a modern, Zionist education. In 1924 the family immigrated to Israel where he attended the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He participated in the Meyerowitz Artists Group in Zichron Yakov.

In the mid-thirties, after studying art in Paris, Aroch adopted a moderate expressionistic style. During the forties he showed a tendency for schematic drawing and the dissolution of the landscape to geometric shapes. In the fifties he adopted a naive painting technique, stressing the decorative aspect of painting.

Arie Aroch, though a member of the “New Horizons” suggested an alternative to lyric abstraction, proposing a greater concentration on form; personal statement instead of objectivity; unconventional techniques instead of methodical professionalism, and a more eclectic approach instead of French abstractionism. Aroch’s sources for his art works include children’s drawings, found objects, folk and traditional characters, and persons remembered from childhood. His thought and techniques (erasing, scratching, scribbling) influenced Israeli young painters such as Aviva Uri and Raffi Lavie.

From 1949-1953 he served in the Israeli diplomatic Office in Moscow; from 1956-1959 he was the Israeli Ambassador to Brazil; from 1959-1962 he was the Israeli Ambasador to Sweden; in 1963 he returned to Israel, retired, and devoted himself to art in Jerusalem.
Arie Aroch died in Jerusalem in 1974.