Shmuel Ackerman Paintings

Shmuel Ackerman, (Shmuel Akkerman), Israeli, born 1951, Soviet Union, active in Israel and France. Shmuel Ackerman was born in Ukraine to a religious family. In 1973, he immigrated ...

Genre: Contemporary Subject: Abstract Medium: Oil Surface: Canvas Hand signed and dated lower left Dimensions: 23 3/4" x 19 3/4" x 1/2" Dimensions w/Frame: 24" x 20 1/2" A bright and colorful abstract oil painting from Ackerman's Celestial Field series. While most pieces in this series are gouache, this electric blue painting is done in oil. Shmuel Ackerman (also spelled Shmuel Akkerman, Samuel Ackerman, Samuel Akkerman) Israeli Symbolist Painter and Co-Founder of the Leviathan Group Shmuel Ackerman (b. 1951, Soviet Union) is an Israeli painter known for his abstract symbolist works exploring the intersection of Jewish mysticism, folk art and folkloric motifs, and modern Western art. Born in Ukraine to a religious family, Ackerman trained at the Institute for Monumental Art in Ukraine from 1965 to 1970 before immigrating to Israel in 1973, settling in Jerusalem. Founding the Leviathan Group In 1976, Ackerman co-founded the Leviathan group in Jerusalem alongside Avraham Ofek and Mikhail Grobman, aiming to enrich Israeli art by drawing on Jewish sources, myth, and symbolism. The group combined conceptual and land art with Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, seeking to forge a distinctly "national" style of Israeli art — publishing its ideas through a Russian-language periodical, also titled Leviathan, that Grobman edited. Within the group, Ofek pursued sculptural and performative work rooted in Kabbalistic symbolism, staging pieces like Ornament in the Landscape (1979) and projecting Hebrew letters onto the soil of the Judean Desert in works such as Letters of Light (1979), while Grobman's paintings and prints wove Hebrew and Russian text through images drawn from Jewish mystical tradition. Ackerman was an active member of the group until 1981, when both he and Ofek departed; Grobman continued the Leviathan project afterward with newer members including Lena Zaidel, who joined following her graduation from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1987, and staged further performances such as Khlebnikov 100 (1985) and Messiah (1987). Context: The Post-Soviet Jewish Avant-Garde Ackerman's formation belongs to a broader generation of Soviet-born Jewish artists whose emigration to Israel and the West reshaped both Israeli and international art in the 1970s and '80s. Grobman himself had been an active figure in the Second Russian Avant-Garde in 1960s Moscow, a milieu of unofficial, nonconformist artists resisting Soviet Socialist Realism that also produced émigré figures such as Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Viktor Pivovarov, Vladimir Yankilevsky, Eduard Steinberg, Yuri Kuper, Grisha Bruskin, and the duo Komar and Melamid — many of whom, like Ackerman, carried the visual language of Soviet nonconformism into new engagements with Jewish identity and symbolism after leaving the USSR. Ofek's work from this same period was later exhibited in the landmark survey Chagall to Kitaj: The Jewish Experience in Twentieth Century Art at London's Barbican Art Gallery, situating the Leviathan group's project within this larger international conversation about modern Jewish art. Later Career in Paris In 1984, Ackerman relocated to Paris, France, where he continued to develop his abstract practice, producing large-scale mixed-media works on paper engaging with the legacy of twentieth-century modernism — his mature series paying explicit homage to Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Clyfford Still, and Robert Motherwell. Ackerman remains active in both Israel and France, continuing a practice that bridges Soviet-era training, Jerusalem's postwar avant-garde, and the broader trajectory of international abstraction. Keywords: Shmuel Ackerman, Shmuel Akkerman, Samuel Ackerman, Israeli painter, Soviet-Israeli artist, Leviathan group, Avraham Ofek, Mikhail Grobman, Second Russian Avant-Garde, Moscow Nonconformist art, post-Soviet Jewish avant-garde, Kabbalah art...