Ben Avram
1941–
Personal History
As a painter, Ben Avram expertly demonstrates the value and importance of truly knowing and deeply loving a singular place. The artist was in Bombay in 1941, during a time of intense global strife, hardship, and complexity as the great war was spreading across Europe, Africa, Asia, and before long, America. But Avram would cut his teeth not in India, but in Israel after immigrating there as a teenager in the mid-1950s. It’s here where Avram’s art flourished, where he studied, learned the craft, and found his muse in the form of the city of Jerusalem.
READ MORE +In 1965, Avram graduated from the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Israel’s oldest institution of higher education, located in the capital. Today, Ben Avram considers himself a Jerusalem painter, a master of oil painting and watercolors. He depicts his adopted hometown and the nation’s diverse landscapes, alleyways, forts, famous gates, seasides, streets, and momentous towers, with masterful skill and intimate warmth. He’s a man who is deeply passionate about creating scenes and characters that do not bathe in the exotic, but rather, the familiar and the authentic. For the viewers and collectors of Ben Avram’s art, they will see sublime scenes and special places that are full of a life true, as witnessed and portrayed by a remarkable modern artist, and honesty above all else.
Style and History
Avram notes that there’s something unique about how the sun hits the Land of Israel. It throws a vast array of rich colors across the countryside, touching its cities and its coast. The artwork he produces relies heavily not only on this colorscape but also on symbolism, with peace doves, menorahs, Shabbat candles, arched entryways, and religious festivals and iconography weaved into each work, in tones that are soft and welcoming. All this coalesces to deliver, on canvas, a kind of poetry of place, with bright colors, playful movements, and a lyricism that, at times, pays homage to his childhood roots in India.
When working on his art, Avram brings refinement and spontaneity to the canvas, along with a vigor that is undeniable to any viewer who stands before one of his paintings. These are works of art that never preach, but instead use allusion, style, and illumination to transport collectors into his stories and his world. There are layers upon layers of accumulated oil and color, acting in unison, as if in a performance. The results of brush strokes that dance and dazzle are of course stunning, but also, in a way, sensual in how the ancient world of Israel is molded into something bold, energized, and new.
