Homage to Nachum Gutman
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Crossposted from Haaretz
The connection between Nachum Gutman (1898-1980) and graduate students at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem is not arbitrary, say curators of the exhibition “What Does It Mean to Interpret a Tradition?”
“Gutman was one of the first students at Boris Schatz’s old Bezalel, and his oeuvre, especially that of the 1920s, has become a part of the canon of Israeli art,” say the curators — Monica Lavie, curator of the Gutman Museum in Tel Aviv, and David Ginton, a lecturer at Bezalel. “The participating students were free to choose.”
Although “land of Israel” painting definitely merits this approach, and although discussion of the canon and tradition is important, the question still arises as to why Bezalel students are taking a particular interest in Gutman all of a sudden.
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