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Yaacov Agam
Star of Peace

1970s

Price Upon Request
Price Upon Request
Price Upon Request
Price Upon Request
Price Upon Request
Price Upon Request
Price Upon Request
Price Upon Request
Price Upon Request
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About the Item

Yaacov Agam "Star of Peace" c. 1970s Metal Ed. 2/300 approx. 9 x 2 x 2 inches Born in Israel on May 11, 1928. His father was a rabbi, a Talmudic scholar and a Kabbalist. The family was poor, and the young Agam received little regular schooling; he studied under a "melamed" in the local synagogue. He soon realized he could draw. "I used to come home with drawings, at first afraid of my father's reactions, since drawing was not permitted on religious principles. But on one occasion my father told me a story: that when he was a student at a yeshiva, he made a drawing on a handkerchief and forgot it on his desk. He came back to look for it because he thought the rabbi would punish him for drawing a figure. But later, when he had forgotten the whole matter and was visiting the rabbi's home, he found the drawing hanging upon the wall." As a teenager, Agam entered the New Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem, where he studied with its director, Mordecai Ardon. There they discovered his "astonishing capacity for drawing. But that's a waste of time, mere craftsmanship, compared to the direct spiritual approach" that his early exposure to Talmudic and Kabbalistic study had taught him. In 1949, he journeyed to Zurich to study. He traveled throughout Europe, where he filled notebook upon notebook with drawings and sketches of Western art and architecture. In viewing the art of the past, he became obsessed with the idea of inventing a new artistic mode of expression that would reflect the present. In 1951, he settled in a studio in Paris where he discovered the world of galleries and dealers, of bohemian cafes and intellectuals and artists. Then he himself was discovered. He received his first one-man show, the first recorded one-man show of kinetic art, in 1953. One of the artistic phenomena of post World War II Europe, he is a leader in the world of experimental art. Agam's works are found in virtually every major museum. His commissions adorn buildings, monuments and vistas from the headquarters of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France to the unique Agam Room in the Louvre in Paris, as well as Hadassah Hospital at Ein Karem in Jerusalem and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. The French, German and Israeli governments have commissioned him. Agam is one of the best-known artists Israel has produced. His work can be divided into three categories: contrapuntal paintings that change color and form as the viewer moves; transformable objects that contain elements whose patterns can be altered by the viewer; and tactile constructions that vibrate, move or give off sound when touched. Agam will use a palette of up to 180 colors for any given painting--so many hues that few photographs can reproduce the fine gradations in shade. While many critics have declared Agam a major contemporary artist and esthetic theoretician, other critics have just as loudly denounced him as being a cold technician, a pale imitator of the Mondrian of the 1940s, a pretentious idealogue. Scientists are as well equipped to judge his work as are art critics. They say, and at the same time assert that his "research" has led him only to rediscover visual tricks that have been known since the Renaissance. The ability to enrage is often as vital a talent as the gift to engage and delight, however. Only skeptics resist the magician and perhaps that is why Agam insists that his visual sleights of hand are for children of all ages. Standing before the shifting, glittering surface of a work by Agam, it is difficult not to experience the childlike surprise of discovery, and perhaps that is the Kabbalistic secret of his success.
  • Creator:
    Yaacov Agam (1928, Israeli)
  • Creation Year:
    1970s
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 9 in (22.86 cm)Width: 2 in (5.08 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Missouri, MO
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU74732406213

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Spectrum
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Spectrum By. Yaacov Agam (Israeli, b. 1928) Signed Lower Right Edition 158/180 Lower Left Unframed: 27" x 33.5" Framed: 36.5" x 43" Yaacov Agam is one of the pioneer creators of the kinetic movement in art as well as its most outstanding contemporary representative. Agam was born in 1928 a son of a Rabbi of Rishon LeZion (Israel), who devoted his life to the study of Jewish religious matters and wrote books. Agam considers himself somehow as a visual continuation of his father's quest for spirituality. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, and in Switzerland at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule and the Zurich University. After arriving to Paris in 1951, Agam held his first one man exhibition with a great success in 1953 This exhibition consisted totally of kinetic, movable and transformable paintings, which actually was the first one-man show in art history exclusively devoted to kinetic art. A passionate experimenter, Agam deals with such problems as the 4th dimension, simultaneity and time in the visual, plastic arts, and has extended his experiments to application in the fields of literature, music and art theory. His works express a concept that breaks away with the established way of expressing reality in limited, static way. In his works, he strives to demonstrate the principle of reality as a continuous "becoming" rather than static "graven image." His paintings Double Metamorphosis 11 in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Transparent Rhythms 11 in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. give the best example of his polymorphic painting. His works are placed in many public places including Communication x 9 on the Michigan Avenue in Chicago (1983), Communication: Night and Day at the AT&T building in New York (1974), Super Lines Volumes at the Pare Floral in Paris (1971), and his murals Peace and Life arc installed at the Parliament of Europe in Strasbourg (1977). Agam has expressed the new concepts in monumental works as in his Jacob's Ladder, which forms the ceiling of the National Convention House in Jerusalem. He created a "floating museum", including all the artworks for public areas and cabins, for the Carnival Cruise Line's luxury cruise ship "Celebration" (1987). His fire-water fountain in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv (1986) streams water, fire, and music -elements of flux and life which cannot be static - as its colored elements rotate in this multidimensional monumental work. For the Elysee Palace in Paris, with the request of President Georges Pompidou Agam created in 1972 a whole environmental of the Salon with the walls covered with polymorphic murals of changing images a kinetic ceiling, moving transparent colored doors and a kinetic carpet on which he placed a sculpture. It embraces viewers: they are no longer looking at a framed, fixed scene, but rather arc moving within an artistic space which changes constantly according to their shifting position and point of view. Similar attempt was made for the concert hall, Forum Leverkusen in Germany in 1970. Agam created many environmental sculptures, including Hundred Gates in the garden of the residence of the President of Israel in Jerusalem, 3 x 3 Interplay installed at the Julliard School of Music at the Lincoln Center and Wings of the Heart at J. F. Kennedy airport in New York. In 1984, he made a sculpture Beating Heart for the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. In 1988, he created a transparent torah ark...
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Emerging
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Emerging, 1985 By. Yaacov Agam ( Israeli, b. 1928) Color Serigraph Signed Lower Right Edition 1/12 Lower Left Unframed: 25" x 31" Framed: 34" x 43" Yaacov Agam is one of the pioneer creators of the kinetic movement in art as well as its most outstanding contemporary representative. Agam was born in 1928 a son of a Rabbi of Rishon LeZion (Israel), who devoted his life to the study of Jewish religious matters and wrote books. Agam considers himself somehow as a visual continuation of his father's quest for spirituality. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, and in Switzerland at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule and the Zurich University. After arriving to Paris in 1951, Agam held his first one man exhibition with a great success in 1953 This exhibition consisted totally of kinetic, movable and transformable paintings, which actually was the first one-man show in art history exclusively devoted to kinetic art. A passionate experimenter, Agam deals with such problems as the 4th dimension, simultaneity and time in the visual, plastic arts, and has extended his experiments to application in the fields of literature, music and art theory. His works express a concept that breaks away with the established way of expressing reality in limited, static way. In his works, he strives to demonstrate the principle of reality as a continuous "becoming" rather than static "graven image." His paintings Double Metamorphosis 11 in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Transparent Rhythms 11 in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. give the best example of his polymorphic painting. His works are placed in many public places including Communication x 9 on the Michigan Avenue in Chicago (1983), Communication: Night and Day at the AT&T building in New York (1974), Super Lines Volumes at the Pare Floral in Paris (1971), and his murals Peace and Life arc installed at the Parliament of Europe in Strasbourg (1977). Agam has expressed the new concepts in monumental works as in his Jacob's Ladder, which forms the ceiling of the National Convention House in Jerusalem. He created a "floating museum", including all the artworks for public areas and cabins, for the Carnival Cruise Line's luxury cruise ship "Celebration" (1987). His fire-water fountain in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv (1986) streams water, fire, and music -elements of flux and life which cannot be static - as its colored elements rotate in this multidimensional monumental work. For the Elysee Palace in Paris, with the request of President Georges Pompidou Agam created in 1972 a whole environmental of the Salon with the walls covered with polymorphic murals of changing images a kinetic ceiling, moving transparent colored doors and a kinetic carpet on which he placed a sculpture. It embraces viewers: they are no longer looking at a framed, fixed scene, but rather arc moving within an artistic space which changes constantly according to their shifting position and point of view. Similar attempt was made for the concert hall, Forum Leverkusen in Germany in 1970. Agam created many environmental sculptures, including Hundred Gates in the garden of the residence of the President of Israel in Jerusalem, 3 x 3 Interplay installed at the Julliard School of Music at the Lincoln Center and Wings of the Heart at J. F. Kennedy airport in New York. In 1984, he made a sculpture Beating Heart for the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. In 1988, he created a transparent torah ark...
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Curtain
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Curtain By. Yaacov Agam (Israeli, b. 1928) Signed Lower Right Edition 221/227 Unframed: 18" x 22.5" Framed: 30.5" x 34.5" Yaacov Agam is one of the pioneer creators of the kinetic movement in art as well as its most outstanding contemporary representative. Agam was born in 1928 a son of a Rabbi of Rishon LeZion (Israel), who devoted his life to the study of Jewish religious matters and wrote books. Agam considers himself somehow as a visual continuation of his father's quest for spirituality. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, and in Switzerland at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule and the Zurich University. After arriving to Paris in 1951, Agam held his first one man exhibition with a great success in 1953 This exhibition consisted totally of kinetic, movable and transformable paintings, which actually was the first one-man show in art history exclusively devoted to kinetic art. A passionate experimenter, Agam deals with such problems as the 4th dimension, simultaneity and time in the visual, plastic arts, and has extended his experiments to application in the fields of literature, music and art theory. His works express a concept that breaks away with the established way of expressing reality in limited, static way. In his works, he strives to demonstrate the principle of reality as a continuous "becoming" rather than static "graven image." His paintings Double Metamorphosis 11 in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Transparent Rhythms 11 in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. give the best example of his polymorphic painting. His works are placed in many public places including Communication x 9 on the Michigan Avenue in Chicago (1983), Communication: Night and Day at the AT&T building in New York (1974), Super Lines Volumes at the Pare Floral in Paris (1971), and his murals Peace and Life arc installed at the Parliament of Europe in Strasbourg (1977). Agam has expressed the new concepts in monumental works as in his Jacob's Ladder, which forms the ceiling of the National Convention House in Jerusalem. He created a "floating museum", including all the artworks for public areas and cabins, for the Carnival Cruise Line's luxury cruise ship "Celebration" (1987). His fire-water fountain in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv (1986) streams water, fire, and music -elements of flux and life which cannot be static - as its colored elements rotate in this multidimensional monumental work. For the Elysee Palace in Paris, with the request of President Georges Pompidou Agam created in 1972 a whole environmental of the Salon with the walls covered with polymorphic murals of changing images a kinetic ceiling, moving transparent colored doors and a kinetic carpet on which he placed a sculpture. It embraces viewers: they are no longer looking at a framed, fixed scene, but rather arc moving within an artistic space which changes constantly according to their shifting position and point of view. Similar attempt was made for the concert hall, Forum Leverkusen in Germany in 1970. Agam created many environmental sculptures, including Hundred Gates in the garden of the residence of the President of Israel in Jerusalem, 3 x 3 Interplay installed at the Julliard School of Music at the Lincoln Center and Wings of the Heart at J. F. Kennedy airport in New York. In 1984, he made a sculpture Beating Heart for the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. In 1988, he created a transparent torah ark...
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