Exhibition Title: "Bubbling with a Spanish Nuance"
A painters' exhibition in the Rishon LeTzion winery – Wine Festival 1994
"Cups without wine are low things
Like a pot thrown to the ground,
But brimming with the juice, they shine
Like body and soul".
(Rabbi Judah HaLevi's ''Cups Without Wine'')

The exhibition took place in 1994, sponsored by the Rishon LeTzion municipality, as part of the annual Wine Festival.
The exhibition was curated by David Katz, art consultant to the mayor and the municipality. The exhibition's theme was the wine poems by Spain's Golden Age poets.
In the exhibition catalogue, the curator David Katz writes: "We challenged the participating artists, both native and immigrants, to approach the motives of wine, brandy and vine of Spain's Jewish poets, and of contemporary poets. The former well expressed, through color and line, those motives, each in his own way…"
For that exhibition, I selected Rabbi Judah HaLevi's ''Cups Without Wine'' (quoted above).
Rabbi Judah HaLevi uses wine and wine cups as a metaphor for the essence of body and soul. The cups without wine are low just as a corpse becomes heavy as the soul leaves. In the painting, I visually express the images rising from the poem, and its connection of body and soul. The work's title is taken from the poem's title, "Cups without Wine''.
This work was preceded by a series of photographs I took. One series of photographs was taken in an Arab Potters' work site. Thereafter, I photographed myself in a series of photographs, where I attempted to create a Spanish wine mood. Based upon those photographs, I produced a series of collages, which constituted the foundation and the sketch for the large-scale painting (200cm X 200cm acrylic on canvas).
The Collages
Click of the pictures for a full view
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