Raffi Lavie (; 23 February 1937 – 7 May 2007) was an

educator A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

and music/art

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as Art criticism, art, Literary criticism, literature, Music journalism, music, Film criticism, cinema, Theater criticism, theater, Fas ...

. Lavie's work is a cross between

graffiti Graffiti (singular ''graffiti'', or ''graffito'' only in graffiti archeology) is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elabor ...

and

abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

Biography

Rafael (Raffi) Lavi was born in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

, During the British Mandate. He began teaching at HaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts in 1966. That same year, he was also a founder of the group ''Ten Plus''. Due to severe back problems, Lavie painted in his last years while sitting. On May 7, 2007, he died of

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...

at his home in Tel Aviv, aged 70. His body was donated to the

University of Tel Aviv Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and research of the ci ...

for research.

Art career

He studied at the Art Teachers' Training College in

and later taught at the HaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts in

Ramat HaSharon Ramat HaSharon (, ) is an affluent city located on Israel's central coastal strip in the south of the Sharon, Israel, Sharon region, bordering the cities of Tel Aviv to the south, Hod HaSharon, Hod-HaSharon to the east, and Herzliya and kibbutz ...

. In the early 1960s, Raffi Lavie began to paint in spontaneous scrawls reminiscent of graffiti and comic strip art. He wrote on his paintings as if they were walls covered with scribbles. His work has been described as angry, nervous, aggressive, and abrasive. He was invited to exhibit with "

Ofakim Hadashim Ofakim Hadashim (, lit. "New Horizons") is an art movement started in Tel Aviv in 1942. New Horizons The Ofakim Hadashim art movement began with a group of artists who mounted an exhibition in Tel Aviv's Habima national theater in December 194 ...

" (New Horizons) but his work challenged the delicate lyricism of the group. Towards the end of the 1960s, Lavi began to glue photographs, reproductions and posters on his works, combining varied aesthetic elements; kitsch, applied graphics, children's drawing, and political rhetoric. He scorned bourgeois prototypes of beauty, and sought to restore the image to art after its banishment by "New Horizons". The synthesis of scribbled line and collage is unique to Lavie's work. It has been compared to the work of American artist

Cy Twombly Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (; April 25, 1928July 5, 2011) was an American Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor, and photographer. Twombly influenced artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, and Jean-Michel Bas ...

. In the mid 1960s, Lavie and his followers became known as the "Tel Aviv School" or the 10+ group. The group were the first to import pop art, avant garde,

found object A found object (a calque from the French ''objet trouvé''), or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already hav ...

art,

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

and photography into their work. "10+ injected irony, humor, and sophistication into Israeli art. They situated everyday objects such as dolls, fragments of papers, towels, and reproductions center stage. Israeli reality marched into the art world that discovered the everyday as proper material for creation." In 1986, curator Sara Breitberg-Semel presented the exhibit, " Want of Matter" at the Tel Aviv Museum. Breitberg-Semel "Want of Matter" thesis of the exhibit was that Lavie and the 10+ group used Jewish concepts and symbols, but the art was secular. She focused on the low-cost materials used in their work, such as plywood, cardboard, writing and scribbling within the work and other low-cost material. The use of such simple and cheap material identified with the establishment of Israel and thus created a new, unique Israel voice. In 2002, a retrospective exhibit opened at the

Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

on Lavie entitled "Rafi Lavie: Works from 1950 to 2002". This exhibit had a new interpretation of Lavie and his followers work. The new interpretation showed how Lavie's work was romantic, rich, filled with the Jewish religion and European roots. In 2005, he had a solo exhibition at Givon Gallery in Tel Aviv. Lavie represented Israel in the 53rd

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

in 2009.

Gallery

File:Raffi Lavie.jpg, Raffi Lavie (1980)
Photographer: Stanley I. Batkin Image:Raffi Lavie~B83_0006.jpg, Untitled, 1969

Collection
B83.0006 Image:Lavie, Raffi-Untitled, 1977_cropped~B92_1599.jpg, Untitled, 1977

Collection
B92.1599 Image:B03_0063~Lavie, Raffi, Untitled, 1983.jpg, Untitled, 1983

Collection
B03.0063

Awards

* 1978 The

Dizengoff Prize The Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture is awarded annually by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality since 1937. The prize is named after Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv. According to the Tel Aviv municipality, the purpose of the pri ...

for Painting and Sculpture, Municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo,

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lavie, Raffi Israeli graffiti artists Artists from Tel Aviv 1937 births 2007 deaths Deaths from pancreatic cancer in Israel Israeli contemporary artists Israeli collage artists Jewish Israeli artists 20th-century Israeli painters 21st-century Israeli painters 20th-century Israeli journalists