Menashe Kadishman

Black Earth, Conceptual Etching with Aquatint by Menashe Kadishman

circa 1979

Menashe Kadishman was born in Mandate Palestine. His father died when he was 15 years old. He left school to help his mother and provide for the family.[1] From 1947 to 1950, Kadishman studied with the Israeli sculptor Moshe Sternschuss at the Avni Institute of Art and Design in Tel Aviv, and in 1954 with the Israeli sculptor Rudi Lehmann in Jerusalem. In 1950–1953, Kadishman worked as a shepherd on Kibbutz Ma'ayan Baruch. This experience with nature, sheep and shepherding had a significant impact on his later artistic work and career. In 1959, Kadishman moved to London to study at Saint Martin's School of Art and the Slade School of Art.[2] In 1959-1960 he also studied with Anthony Caro and Reg Butler.[2] He had his first one-man show there in 1965 at the Grosvenor Gallery. In 1972, he returned to Israel. In the 1960s, Kadishman's sculptures were Minimalist in style, and so designed as to appear to defy gravity. This was achieved either through careful balance and construction, as in Suspense (1966), or by using glass and metal so that the metal appeared unsupported, as in Segments (1968). The glass allowed the environment to be part of the work. The first major appearance of sheep in his work was at the 1978 Venice Biennale, where Kadishman presented a flock of colored live sheep as living art.[4] In 1995, he began painting portraits of sheep by the hundreds, and even thousands, each one different from the next. These instantly-recognizable sheep portraits soon became his artistic "trademark"