Joseph Zaritsky

Joseph Zaritsky, an Israeli painter, was born in 1891 in Ukraine. In 1923 Zaritsky immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem.
Zaritsky was one of the initiators of the first exhibition of Israeli artists in the Tower of David. From 1927 he served as the chairman of the Painters and Sculptors Association in Israel. In 1948 founded the “New Horizons” art group and movement.

Zaritsky painted watercolor landscapes and his work became gradually more expressive. Zaritsky developed a “Lyrical Abstract” style of painting, where the abstract forms – usually squares – were processed using brush strokes into compositions and splashes of color increasingly dissociated from the original.

During the early 20s, Zaritsky moved to Tel-Aviv. In 1927 he visited Paris where he was exposed to Western modernist art. In the 1930’s-40’s he focused on urban landscapes – Tel-Aviv roofs as seen from the roof of his house.
From 1949-1951 he taught art in Kibbutz Yehiam and Naan. The open countryside inspired him to create a series of watercolor drawings based on this new landscape.
In 1954 Zaritsky traveled to Europe for over two years. In Paris he was impressed by the blossoming of abstract painting, versus illusory- figurative painting. In 1955 he spent some time in Amsterdam.
In a series created between the years 1964-1974 there is an increasing distancing from figurative painting, and a more abstract composition and structure emerges.

From the early Seventies, Zaritsky spent every summer in a studio in Kibbutz Tsuba, where he painted a simplification of the landscape in watercolors. During the Eighties, he created a series of paintings, some of monumental sizes, based on works by artists such as Goya, Picasso, Chagall and others.
Joseph Zaritsky died in 1985 in Tel-Aviv.