Yitzhak Livneh’s previous exhibition at Noga Gallery, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” held about a year and a half ago, dealt with depictions of ripped paintings. His current exhibition, “Something Befell,” is an additional link in his multi-year interest with depictions of destruction and ruins. The paintings depict states of crushing and crumbling, yet they are not landscapes of ruins viewed from a distant point.

The paintings in “Something Befell” lack a point of view and there is no distance or defined horizon line. There’s no distance between the viewer and the ruin – a state that no longer allows for a safe standpoint from which to contemplate the ruin and reflect on history or the fate of empires.

The exhibition opens alongside the launch of the third volume in the “Golden Notebook” series, published by the Bezalel Department of Fine Arts in collaboration with Asia Publishers. The series is a gesture of appreciation and recognition by the department toward artists of significant influence within the local art scene, and on the spirit and philosophy of art education – a field in which Yitzhak Livneh has played a major and central role. Livneh was one of the leading and most prominent lecturers in the Fine Arts Department for almost four decades.