Ilana Raviv

Ilana Raviv

Ilana Raviv-Oppenheim (born 1945) is a multidisciplinary artist. Her work spans a variety of media: painting, drawing, etching, tapestry, and ceramic sculpture.

She was born in Tel Aviv to Itzhak and Fanya Oppenheim. Moritz Daniel Oppenheim was her great-great-granduncle. He was considered “the first Jewish painter” in Europe, very well known and popular in his day. A large exhibition of his works was mounted at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Ilana grew up in Israel, and her art was influenced partly by such Israeli sights as the Negev, the Sinai, the Galilee, and greater Tel Aviv. Ilana always knew, and made known, that art was her calling.

From 1980 to 1990, she lived with her family in the art capital of the world, New York, in order to study, renew herself, and broaden her artistic vision. During her stay, from 1980 to 1984 she studied at the Art Students League of New York. Among her teachers were Roberto Delamonica, Bruce Dorfman, and the American master Knox Martin, who was active in New York and was her guide, mentor, and inspiration.

Ilana Raviv has exhibited in various museums and galleries of Israel, the USA, Europe, and the Far East. Recently Ilana has exhibited her works alongside the best known of artists, including Knox Martin, Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Rosenquist, Chuck Close, Marisol, and more.

Today she divides her time between Israel and New York.

Raviv draws her inspiration from works of the ancient past – primitive wall paintings – and ushers them through the ways and spirit of masterworks by Titian, Veronese, Frans Hals, Velásquez, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, de Kooning, Knox Martin, and others.

Ilana Raviv uses extreme metaphors. She has won the appreciation of art critics around the world. Much of her work focuses on femininity, on the strata of life from childhood to adolescence and from adulthood to partnering, and on relations between the sexes.

The great mother figure from Greek mythology is among the chief topics in her work, as are other characters from the Bible, from history, and from literature. Her works are built from a variety of flat designs, contrasts, and shapes, which create different versions and dimensions of reality.

Raviv describes her works as "a metaphor which creates and shapes an artificial life on canvas".

In 2008 she received the title of Tel Aviv–Jaffa "Woman of the Year", representing the arts.

Her work is represented in private collections and in various museums and galleries around the world. A solo exhibition consisting of 50 pictures by Ilana was presented at the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg between October 2007 and January 2008, and another solo exhibition of 100 pictures was presented at the Museum of Modern Art Moscow. In both museums, she was the first native Israeli to exhibit. In both museums, the exhibits achieved great success. The State Russian Museum even asked to extend the term of the exhibit in response to popular demand. Both museums called her works comparable in quality to those of the Great Russian artists and the 20th century masters.

The world of Ilana Raviv, an Israeli artist from the American school of painting, is presented to the Russian viewer for the

first time. As we identify and describe her world in Russian, we may well compare it with the dramatic and expressive works of the so-called avant-garde Amazons, the apocalyptic figures of Natalia Goncharova, the card cycle of Olga Rozanova ...

— Lubov Shakirova, curator at the State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg

Here in these halls, we see pictures by Ilana Raviv that recall the work of the greatest 20th-century artists. Not only Matisse and Picasso but also Albert Marquet or Raoul Dufy, the wonderdul French Fauvist painters. Similar simplicity, terseness, and wealth of energy in every spot also characterize Ilana Raviv’s excellent work. From that perspective, in my opinion, Ilana is a true successor to the outstanding artists of the 20th century.
— Dr. Andrei Tolstoy, head of the research department at the Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts

Besides the Russian museum exhibits, there is a Holocaust-themed painting that has figured for many years in the permanent collection of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. In this painting Ilana exposes the monstrous aspect of the topic more than she trains a direct view on its consequences. The painting shows the Ten Commandments consumed by flame, with an emphasis on "Thou shalt not murder." The struggle to survive is expressed only in the mixture of colors.

Her painting A Tabernacle of Peace – Homage to Zachariah" (acrylic on canvas, 2.12 meters by 10) opened Israel’s 40th anniversary celebrations in New York at the world’s largest sukkah. Later it was displayed for eight years in the main entrance hall of the Jerusalem International Convention Center.

Raviv is married and the mother of three. In the course of her life she has displayed her creations at many exhibits, including a pro bono exhibit to benefit Seeds Of Peace, which aims to inspire and connect Arab and Jewish youth.

My work contains no political manifesto or statement of intent. I do not fit into any cubbyhole by name, place, fad, taste, or changeable fashion. The creation itself, and the process that it implies, are a thing that suggests itself anew from moment to moment, out of itself alone, with respect to the entire format, be it right to left, be it top to bottom, appearing and changing from one instant to the next and surprising myself all over again ...


You could compare my works to the motion a kaleidoscope creates, presenting itself afresh with each twist ...

Art studies

Prizes

Photo gallery

One-person shows

Group exhibitions, commissions, and permanent collections

Member

Selected publications

ArtSpeak (July 1981). Christopher Millis, ArtSpeak, (November 1981). The Riverdale Press (November 1981). Beautiful Talent, Israel Shelanu (December 1981). Mary Abell, The Bohemian Tradition and Alternative Spaces, ArtSpeak (October 1982). The New Explosion: Paper Art, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, New York (November 1982), CDS Gallery New York (1983). Claude LeSuer, New Talent’s Tribute to Tradition, ArtSpeak (November 1983). The Village Voice (1983). Bronx Museum of the Arts Satellite Gallery Program, exh. cat., (1985). Israel Shelanu (November 1986). “Succoth Mural Celebrates Israel’s Independence”, The New York Times (October 1987). Real Estate Weekly (September 1987). Carol Polsky, “Is Heavy-duty Harvest Hut World’s Largest Sukkah?”, New York Newsday (October 1987). “World’s Largest Sukkah Unveiled”, The Jewish Press (October 1987). Jewish Community News (October 1987). The New York Jewish Week (October 1987). The Queens Jewish Week (October 1987). Hadoar (October 1987). The Riverdale Press (December 1987). Les Krantz, The New York Art Review, An Illustrated Survey of the City’s Museums, Galleries and Leading Artists (1988). Moznaim Literary Publication (November 1995). Art 2000, Israeli Artists, Painters and Sculptors (1997). Moznaim Literary Publication (August 1997). Marquis Who’s Who in the World (1998). Her Presence in Colors IV, exh. cat. International Women Artists, Marsi Gallery, Suan Pakkad Palace Museum, Thailand (2000). Gallery & Studio: The World of the Working Artist, N.Y. “Women’s Lives & Myths” (November/December 2000) “Synthetic Realism”: The Wilfrid Israel Museum of Oriental Art and Studies, exh. cat (December 2001), “Artists of Israel 2002″ Editor: Yehuda May, Mechira Pumbit, 158pp , MAC21- International Contemporary Art Fair – Manifestaciones de Arte Contemporaneo, Exhibit Catalogue (July 2002) “1001 Reasons to Love the Earth”, The World Art Collection, 528 pp. ed.: Frans van der Beek “Arte al Femminile” (Feminine Art) exh. cat. Published by “New Assioma” Centro d’Arte e Cultura Contemporanea” 48 pp., Agenda Prato (14 Marzo 2003), “Quattordici modi di declinare l'”Arte al femminile” (Il Terreno 12 Marzo, 2003) Hedwig Brenner: Judische Frauen in der bildenden Kunst II 394pp Hartung-Gorre Verlag Konstanz 2004,The 110 Anniversary of the Russian Museum, The State Russian Museum annual report ( Palace edition publication) 2008,Cover for the book “The Sins of the Fathers” by Professor John Witte, Jr( Cambridge university press ) 2009,The Moscow Museum of Modern Art’s magazine (February 2009)

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