Yehezkel Streichman

Yehezkel Streichman, an Israeli painter, was born in 1906, Kovno, Lithuania. He immigrated to Israel in 1924.
His early works show the influence of modern art, particularly expressionism and the “School of Paris”. The subject of most of his works in the first years in Israel were traditional such as portraits, female nudes and other domestic subjects, and few of his works were of outdoor scenes.
The painting style he developed was significantly modern, and used expressive brush strokes and dark colors. In 1944 he and Avigdor Stematsky formed “The Studio” Art School, because they felt that Israeli art schools were too conservative. In 1948 Streichman was one of the founders of “New Horizons” with Joseph Zaritsky and Stematsky, a group of artists seeking to advance modern art in Israel, and universality as a cultural value, bringing it to the international forefront. Under the influence of the group, and particularly under the influence of Josef Zaritsky, Streichman’s art tended more and more towards abstraction, which reached the peak of its popularity at the beginning of the 1960s. His work from this period shows a synthesis of influences: between the Cubism of Georges Braque and the lyric abstraction of “New Horizons,” and between the image of reality and abstraction.
In 1964, he and Yechiel Shemi and other artists formed an artist group called Tatzpit (Vantage Point). From the 1970’s onward, Streichman’s art tends towards light colors and broad brushstrokes on top of a geometric structure. He died on January 12, 1993, in Tel Aviv, at the age of 86.