Nahum Gutman (1898-1980)

1898 - Born in Talenshet, Russia.

1905 - Immigrates to Palestine and settles with his family in Tel Aviv.

1920 – Leaving for Vienna to study sculpting. He traveled to Berlin and to Paris where he participated in an exhibition with the artists Chagall, Modigliani and Soutin.

1930s-1970s Gutman has exhibitions in New York, Boston, South Africa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, illustrates children magazines and writes illustrated children books

He had once said "I paint out of my impression of the view and our surroundings, and as for the sea shore – it runs across our entire country." The sea and is a central motive in Gutman’s work as are scenes of pre-Israel Palestine, complete withthemes of local Arab culture and Israeli themes side by side. As a child he had watched the sea extensively through his school window and every arriving ship carried with it exciting new smells and mysterious. Inspired by the Eastern Persian miniatures, Gutman created two dimensional, flat colored fields placed one above the other while ignoring the formal perspective. He experimented with distinctive colors combinations to form rich colored carpet.

 

Pink Carriage, Silkscreen, 1970s, $750

Hand-signed in Hebrew and numbered in pencil, edition 150

Pink Carriage is a romantic and colorful print showing a carriage—interestingly NOT in pink—driven by an Arab driver in typical outfits, carrying two veiled women. The color scheme used by Gutman reflected his .fascination with the light washed scenery in Palestine and later Israel, and the colorfulness of the Arab scene. As an inhabitant of pre-Israel Palestine the fascination with anything local, anything Arab was overwhelming, and seen by Gutman, always in bright colors, quite literally as well as metaphorically. Pink Carriage is a classical example of Gutman’s fascination with and love of the color-rich local culture encountered by the Jewish settlers in Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century.