L’Arbre sans Feuilles.

Raised in Bukovina, Arikha and his family were deported to the Romanian-run concentration camps of Transnistria where his father died. In 1944 safety was found in British-Mandate Palestine where Arikha was severely wounded fighting in Israel’s War of Independence. In 1949 he attended the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem, after which Arikha won a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, a city he settled in permanently from 1954. An abstract-turned-realist artist, one particular influence in Arikha’s output is Chinese brush-painting which certainly resonates here: The continuous stroke throughout the picture, a minimal number of tones to express shade and texture, and the intrinsic attempt to capture the spirit of the subject matter.