Born in 1929 in Romania, Avigdor Arikha survived the 2nd World War and came to Israel at the age of 15. In 1946 he begun his studies at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, but a few years later was awarded a scholarship and moved to Paris, to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and has been residing in Paris since the early 1950s.
In his early years, Arikha was an abstract painter, but during the early 1960s he underwent a grave artistic crisis, sensing that he could go no further with abstraction. He then began painting from nature, initially in black-and-white, later moving on to colour. The motifs he depicted were presented on the canvas life-sized, as they appeared to him. Arikha painted without resort to sketches, generally laying the motifs down on canvas and completing the painting in a single session. His paintings convey a melancholy feeling, depicting the world of everyday things.
Later he took to painting nudes. Initially he produced nudes of himself and his wife; subsequently, of a model. The nudes express his affinity with classical painting, in particular the work of Ingres, Degas and Poussin.

 

Avigdor Arikha's works were exhibited in 2002 in Golconda Fine Art .