Self-Portrait, Nude Torso

Romanian-born painter, draftsman, printmaker, designer, and writer Avigdor Arikha survived the Holocaust and in 1944 immigrated to Israel, where he lived on a kibbutz and studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art. He settled in Paris in 1954 and became a noted abstract painter. He ceased painting in the mid-1960s and focused on drawing and etching, and when he resumed painting in the early 1970s, turned to figurative art, creating landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Arikha was also a curator, lecturer, and writer on art.