לעברית


Moshe Kassirer's art depicts the landscape and inhabitants of Galilee. With the olive tree as a dominant theme, Moshe strives to recapture the essence of the simple life of bygone times in Israel's Galilee region... (Shlomi Schwartzberg, Curator)



Artist Statement


Pristine nature is vanishing from our world. Manual labor and working the land are slowly being replaced by modern industry, hi-tech, and globalization. As a result of this, humanity has become detached from the environment, and from the harmony that once existed between man and nature. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution we have been involved in a process of self-destruction and devastation of our environment, which has begun to turn on us.
My paintings relate to the simplicity of man, the naiveté of life, and the beauty of natural landscapes, which are rapidly vanishing from the world. The ladder that appears in some of my paintings is a practical one, but it also symbolizes the connection between the earthly and the spiritual, between the needs of man, which have become destructive, and the elusive spiritual search, which is beyond our daily material needs.

Moshe Kassirer


Artist Biography


1977     Studied painting in evening classes at "Bustan" art school while in elementary school
1992     Studied painting at the "Avni Institute" in Tel Aviv
               Received personal tutoring from the painter Naftali Golomb
1994     Studied film at "Camera Obscura” in Tel Aviv
1995     Won the "America Israel Cultural Foundation" scholarship
1997     Worked as art director in the Israeli film and advertising industry
2003     Moved to the rural village of Yodfat in the Galilee, where he lives with his family
2005     Studied with the Australian artist Robert Bosler
2006     Studied with the Hawaiian artist Don Jusko
2007     Began exhibiting and working full time as an artist



The Way Home


After years of involvement in the hardcore consumerism and materialism of Tel-Aviv's advertising and IT scene, Moshe Kassirer decided to rebel. He moved to Yodfat, his wife's native village, a community that offers its residents the antithesis of city life and represents a unique way of life within the human landscape of the Galilee. Moshe had embarked on his journey: The Way Home.

Artists such as Reuven Rubin and Nachum Gutman have been a source of inspiration for Moshe's work. They were considered the "Rebellious Current" of their time; renouncing the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem, they replaced Judaism with a new culture defined by Hebraic history and created the original "Land of Israel" style of painting, a style that reflected daily life in Israel, the landscape of the country and its pioneering values.

Paradoxically, the indigenous Arabs served as models for these artists, representing the primordial Israelite, a contra-type of the Diaspora urban Jew. Arabs appear in Moshe's work as well, providing models worthy of emulation, although often his Arab models undergo metamorphosis and are to be found wearing traditional Israeli caps, introducing the question of identity; "Who is the native here?" or perhaps, Moshe's yearning that Arabs and Jews might live together in simplicity.

The image of the olive tree is a dominant theme in Moshe's work, representing rootedness, longevity, survival, strength, awe; the very antithesis of transience. "I will always paint olive trees in my landscape art," Moshe says, "other trees might interfere with the monumental representation of the olive tree itself or diminish the significance of its thousand-year-old history".

Yigal Zalmona, curator of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, summarized the inclusive context of the olive tree, "The olive tree is belonging, connection to place, the Mediterranean Sea, local color, a symbol of peace, the bible, the history of our culture, politics, Israeli art, eternity…(Definition of the olive tree, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1982)".

Moshe believes that, above all, painting is about color; the harmony of colors. He uses paints straight from the tube to preserve the purity, strength and energy of the pigments. The layers of paint are scraped with a brush, as if he intends to etch these images of Nature on our minds.

This exhibit presents Moshe's landscape paintings, paintings that embody the scenery of our homeland. But there is also a longing for an ancient, perhaps even biblical way of life, the way of life sought by the pioneers who returned to the Land of Israel after an exile of two thousand years... Thus, from his point of view, The Way Home has just begun.

Shlomi Schwartzberg, Curator, 2008.



There are artists


There are artists, and then there are artists who reveal the multi-leveled nature of their calling.
Moshe Kassirer is one of these, an artist intent on capturing nuances of the Galilean way of life, focused on its olive groves, or to be more precise, olive tableaus. Kassirer's images undergo a complex process, involving photography and digital dismantling and reassembly, before finally appearing on canvass (in oil).

Kassirer's awareness of his roots, and of his debt to early Israeli artists, is evident throughout his work, and his "Rosh Hashanah 2007" is actually an homage to Reuven Rubin's 1970's painting "Pomegranates on my Window" (on display at the Rubin Museum), while creating a dialogue with Van Gogh's 1889 San Remy olive trees as well. Kassirer, differing from Van Gogh, emphasizes sunbeams and heat, penetrating Galilee's soil and emanating from it, the sun as the vital source that generates Israel's olives.

The multi-leveled nature of the paintings manifests, first of all, in the layers of paint, witnessing Kassirer's respect for his materials, resulting in bountiful, multi-faceted, ever-changing works of art. The many layers create paintings that seem illuminated from within, shimmering, vibrant. Kassirer's art has to be seen face-to face. Newspaper photos, websites, or exhibit catalogues may serve to remind us of paintings we've seen, but lack the multi-dimensionality bursting from these canvasses, a feature that cannot be conveyed by two-dimensional media reproductions.

Copious layers of paint are not the only evidence of the multi-dimensional quality of Kassirer's work, which portrays numerous dimensions of interpretation as well, both overt and concealed, some of which are revealed by observing a certain painting, and others which come to light only after viewing the exhibit as a whole.

As stated, Kassirer's art deals mainly with olive trees, so if we reduce all his trees, as if by algebraic equation, what we have left are ladders, lambs, sheep and a bicycle, not to mention the farmers harvesting the olives, whom we'll relate to later.

A ladder standing on its own immediately brings to mind THE ladder of Jewish tradition; Jacob's ladder, angels ascending and descending, the only occurrence of the word "ladder" in the Old Testament, where God appeared to Jacob and repeated His promise to bequeath the Land of Israel to his descendants, "I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee back into this land…" (Gen 28:15). In other words, there is a linkage between the land and its ownership and the presence of the ladder.

Ladders as well as lambs are to be found in the Jewish art of Marc Chagall, whose work is charged with Jewish symbolism. Kassirer chose "Maketh Peace on High Places" as the name for his lamb painting. Anyone familiar with the biblical story of the scapegoat sacrificial offering cannot help but ponder the identity of the lamb that must be sacrificed before that longed-for peace is achieved.

Looking at the olive tree in terms of national identity and self-determination raises questions as to the identity of the farmer in Kassirer's art; he looks like an Arab, but he's wearing the distinctive blue cap of the Zionist pioneers. Is Kassirer telling us that Arab farmers were the real pioneers? Are they still? And does this imply that the Jews are no longer interested in olives or land or their homeland?

Moshe Kassirer's not-to-be-missed exhibit, "The Way Home", raises these questions and more.
Braude College Art Gallery through December 13.

Shoshi Norman, Curator, 2008



An Investment Venue? Garbuz’s Works are Underpriced, Can Be Found for $3,000


Bonds? Options? Stocks? Discover an investment venue that’s a little different – artworks. BIZportal met with art investment experts: how much does it cost, what return counts as success, and of course, what to beware of.

The field of art acquisitions is often seen as the privilege of the elite, but in recent years more and more people are turning to it as a venue for solid long-term investments that sometimes offers an excellent yield.
In an interview with Bizportal, art consultant Moshe Abir, owner of the Dan Gallery in Tel Aviv, says that investing in the art field is not necessarily for the rich alone. “People are willing to invest 20-30,000 NIS to furnish a new living room, why shouldn’t they invest $1,000 in a classical painting? People who have purchased paintings at that price six years ago can now receive over $5,000 for them”...

...Danny Dar, a veteran art collector in Tel Aviv, says many artworks improve with age, like good wine. “Yosel Bergner’s works become more valuable every year, though they can still be purchased at the reasonable rates of $5,000 -- $30,000...

...Dar adds that one must love the art field and keep up with developments in order to make the right acquisition. “As with fashion, in art, too, styles change and one must take the pulse of events. The painter Moshe Kassirer may be the next Rubin, because his works show singularity and a style that is going to catch on. There’s a huge demand for his pieces, and investors are willing to spend 40,000 NIS on each.”

Liran Sahar, BizPortal, 2011