The Yellow Coachman.

GUTMAN, NAHUM

Tel Aviv, 1927.

Oil on canvas. Signed by the artist in Hebrew and English lower right. Framed.

Nachum Gutman (1898-1978) was born in Telenesty, Bessarabia (today, Moldova) and immigrated to Eretz Israel as a young child. He served in the Jewish Legion during the First World War, after which he studied at the Bezalel School in Jerusalem. His time there was brief as he rebelled against the old school manner of instruction. Instead he developed his own artistic approach that combined direct experience of building a new Jewish life in Palestine, which contrasted with his adoption of the modernist trends prevalent within the arts in Europe. Gutman’s sense of style was particularly found in his exotic images of the local Palestinian Arab community, in which he depicted its people in such a way that captured the instinctual and sensuous atmosphere of the Middle East. Gutman was truly a product of his environment and his body of art was most broad, working in a variety of media, as well as making a name for himself as a prolific and renowned writer, especially of children’s literature. Provenance: Acquired from the artist’s widow, 1982. Exhibited: The Jewish Museum, New York, The Batkin Collection of Israeli Art (1985). Catalogue p. 18. Literature: Five Beloved Cities. Paris, Mourlot, (1978).