New Barbizon School – “Portraits & Landscapes” (15.8 – 13.9)

Natalia Zourabova 2014In our next exhibition which opens on August 15 we are pleased to host the “New Barbizon School”. “New Barbizon School” was founded in the summer of 2010 by five artists (Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, Olga Kundina, Anna Lukashevsky, Asya Lukin and Natalia Zourabova), who immigrated to Israel from the former USSR. The name of the group relates to the French Barbizon School which was active in the middle of the 19th century, whose members worked in the surrounding of the Barbizon village where they abandoned formalism and drew inspiration directly from nature.

 

 

Anna Lukashevsky 2014Their refusal to work in the studio was part of their resistance against the romantic and neo classic fashions of their time and carried social implications expressed in their art. Similarly, the leaving of the studios in the case of the “New Barbizon School” contains a critical stance. This critical approach is expressed in the fact that the artists go out and paint amongst people, in different loci where each place dictates directly the content of their paintings.

 

 

Olga Kundina 2014These places might be a neglected Bedouin village in the south of Israel, a Kibbutz, old Jaffa or Dahisha (The Palestinian refugee camp near Beth Lehem). The Barbizon group go out to paint amongst dropouts, immigrants refugees or in places where social protests occur, as the one enacted in 2011 where many people lived in tents for long periods in order to protest the high costs of living in their state.

 

Asya Lukin 2014Most places are far from the eye, as far as the Israelis are concerned, but they are exactly the spaces which interest the group and where they feel their presence might cause a change, even if it is a very small one.

In their exhibition at Circle1 the group will presents works that were done in the last 2 years, in different parts of Israel.

Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi 2014