New Horizons & Yossef Zaritsky: Israeli Art Revolution
The Israeli Art Version of Lyrical Abstraction
“There is no point nor value in talking about Israeliness in painting. It should be felt, whether you think it or not. There is no point in artificially ‘making’ Israeliness.” By unknown
A significant turning point in Israeli art came with the formation of the artistic group New Horizons. Curiously, this happened in 1948, the same year Israel declared independence. The circumstances of the group’s formation are full of intrigue and drama. Still, I’ll keep that story for later because it’s more important first to acknowledge and appreciate the essence of the group’s creative force and influence on Israeli art that came ever after.
New Horizons offered a direction, a promise, a door to a new world. Although no stylistic or ideological common denominator existed for all its members’ works, there was a shared desire to avoid an explicit representation of reality. The group was formed when Israeli art’s narrative moved from expressions of the collective Zionist ethos to a person’s individual artistic experience. It reflected the struggle between the social art camp and its rivals who advocated art for art’s sake and between the localists and those looking outward toward the universal.
Lyrical Abstraction: Art at the Edge of Memory
New Horizons’ primary artistic language was Lyrical Abstraction—an Israeli adaptation of an abstract painting style that had already taken root in Europe and the United States. However, in its Israeli context, this style often began with a figurative subject, which was then deconstructed into abstraction. Even as artists dismantled their subjects, a trace of representation always lingered beneath the surface.
Some art historians believe that this style reflects the Israeli state of mind during its formative years—a nation emerging from the shadows of the Holocaust and the War of Independence. It was as if the art itself whispered: forget, suppress the past, erase, blur, and push forward. A collective movement toward shaping a new Israeli identity—the Sabra, named after the prickly pear cactus—thorny and prickly on the outside, yet tender, sweet, and full of life within.