There are numerous episodes, myths, legends, anecdotes and stories that involve the medium of painting: in his Natural History, Pliny describes a painting by the famous Zeuxis in which some grapes were so successfully represented that birds flew up to it; in his The Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari, wrote that Paolo Uccello – who had this name because he loved animals and would often paint them – was once so offended by Donatello that he refused to come out of his room but sat working at his drawings, and whenever his wife called him to come to bed he would answer “What a wonderful thing perspective is!”
However no story is more appropriate to this occasion than the one told in The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac. This is not the time to tell the full story, and notwithstanding the differences between the cases, the comparison to Eti Jacobi – her practice, her works, her devotion, her obsessions – is fitting. Her modus operandi, her untiring desire to unlock the mystery of painting, a quest that has been keeping her busy for more than forty years, is a model for what art could be, and should aspire to be.
Through the juxtaposition of works that appear to be different – a neophyte would say “abstract” versus “figurative” works, but such distinctions have little place in Jacobi’s complex universe – but which are in fact created with the same mind (and body) set, the artist is challenging our own mind and our own body; yes the full body, because speaking only about the eyes would be in fact misleading since Jacobi’s large paintings need our full attention.
In other words, through this strategy of juxtaposition, which she has employed before, Jacobi is demanding full attention, full devotion and commitment. What appears to be shapeless is in fact the opposite. What seems to depict figures, eventually turns into pure color – or lack thereof, if we consider the strong presence of black in this exhibition.
A malady, just as the title suggests, is what Jacobi ‘suffers’ from and constantly endures. It does not matter if a work takes six months or six minutes to be completed. The position from which the artist creates actually happens to be same, due to the fact that there is in each case an equal craving to possess all the unknown rules for the making of the perfect painting and there is an equivalent force which is directed to the understanding of how to push the limits of color applied on a surface. Thus, through such ‘simple’ actions, Jacobi reveals to us, paradoxically, how painting is still the most difficult language created by humankind.
In the company of Poussin (just like the protagonist of Balzac’s story), Caravaggio (whose whispers can be heard in Jacobi’s dark still lives) and the unique light that every day touches this land and enters her studio, the artist creates a world in which she sets the rules in order to challenge them, “warms up” (this is how she often defines her drawing practice) in order to create art that has nothing to do with today, yesterday or tomorrow’s currencies. Like painting itself, despite how the times try to convince us otherwise, Jacobi’s practice is a constant siege, which goal is to conquer immortality.
—Nicola Trezzi
Noga Gallery is pleased to exhibit the fifth solo exhibition by Eti Jacobi Lelior, ‘The Blue Bambi’.
Jacobi Lelior is the winner of the Rapaport Award for Senior Artist, one of the most significant and prestigious awards in Israel, in 2022.
A solo exhibition of her works will be shown at the Tel Aviv Museum of art as part of the award in the year 2024.
Eti Jacobi Lelior was born in Jaffa in 1961. She graduated from art studies at Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem at 1983, she holds a B.A in classical studies and philosophy from Tel Aviv University.
Since 1981 she has been teaching at Hamidrasha Faculty of Arts – Beit Berl and Bezalel Academy of Art, Jerusalem.
Jacobi Lelior works were shown in a variety of solo exhibitions, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Uri & Rami Nehoshtan Museum, Hamidrasha Gallery and more.
Her works are included in the collections of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Israel Museum and more.
Jacobi Lelior received prestigious awards, among them: The Creation Encouragement Prize, Ministry of Science and Education in 2011, The Minister of Education and Culture Prize for the Visual Arts in 2009, The Jacques and Eugenie Ohana Award for a young Israeli artist from the Israel Museum in 1992, The Young Artist Award from the Ministry of Education 1989.
“I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all we can see of the objective world, as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meanings that we attach to it. We can know only that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree.”
– Giorgio Morandi
Eti Jacobi Lelior’s solo exhibition features eight new paintings, all done in acrylic on canvas and are 100 × 100 cm in size. The exhibition centers around two main “subjects of interest” related to Jacobi Lelior’s practice, which is devoted to painting and the multitude of manifestations related to this medium.
The first subject of interest is that of still life. This painting genre has been employed by artists over the centuries in order to convey technical and conceptual ruminations that have little or nothing to do with the genre itself. Its emptiness has always been its strength, allowing the language of painting to emerge in all its glory without being obfuscated by the intrinsic power of subject matter. Placing herself within this legacy, Jacobi Lelior – who over the last forty years has created numerous series of still life paintings – once again takes this opportunity to experiment with layers of colors and brush strokes, complementing her latest body of work – different in size and scope – which will take central stage in her upcoming solo exhibition at Tel Aviv Museum of Art (TAMA). However, in sheer contrast with her previous still lifes that saw shapes emerging from a black background, this new series is based on a palette of pinks and purples, echoing the colors dominating the body of work that will be presented for the first time at TAMA.
The second subject of interest is repetition. The decision to make a still life painting already entails a double sense of repetition. Firstly, since the painting repeats – or let us presume it repeats – a composition of objects arranged by the artist and subsequently copied. Secondly, due to the weight of the genre itself, which means that any artist doing still lifes evokes a long list of iconic paintings of this kind: from Caravaggio’s to Cézanne’s still lifes, through Rococo painters like Chardin, whose works are a recurring source of inspiration for the artist. Following these premises, repetition becomes, just like the genre of still life itself, a way of liberation, a way out of the limitations of interpretation. It frees the artist from issues of originality and meaningfulness, turning the spotlights only to what really matters to Jacobi Lelior. To conclude, we can argue that – through the combination of playfulness and virtuosity – the artist aims at achieving, in a quest that seems not to have any end or limit, the perfect painting.
– Nicola Trezzi, Selvino, Italy
In the exhibition “What of the Night”, I present paintings of a lake in the forest during a moon lit enchanted night, filled with lovers,demons and floating fairies.
The landscape itself is freely based on the works of Nicholas Poussin. Through the epic painting of Poussin, full of talent gorged with the technical abilities of a master, I try to release a fairy-like act, made with little devious picturesque tricks. Using these elements, down to almost the lowest level of the ability to paint, I ask to stay loyal to the event of youth; through the moment I discovered the great painting, the art
Fairies and donkeys
The main body of my work is paintings on black canvas. There is a tradition of painting which reacts to the white canvas, to a blank support.
The white is the non-color which is being stained. The non-color of my works is the Black. Of course, the logic of acting towards a blank, black background is different from the logic of acting in response to the white background (like Raffi Lavie or Cy Twombly). Nevertheless, I still take action towards the black in a way which has to do with the way these painters (re)act towards the white.
There has always been a figure of a fairy in my works. My painting is the utmost degree of stuttering fairytales.
Concerning that, there is a thought that keeps popping up in my head, a suspicion that always bothers me: that in every donkey there hides a fairy.