Small Bridge Paintings


Though I was born in N.Y., a city of bridges, the first time that I drew a bridge was in 1967, after the 6 Day War, upon seeing the destroyed bridges over the Jordan, near Jericho.
The drawing is in charcoal, very black and "tragic". The most striking element is the ruptured part of the bridge, the void.
Another painting from that time, "Uprooted Bridge', utilizes vibrant color. The torn up bridge almost appears like a waterfall.
Seventeen years later, in 1984,I paid a visit to N.Y.and lived on Roosevelt Island. From my window on the 19th floor, I looked out over the East River,
at the Queensborough Bridge and at Manhattan. Every day, I rode the cable car back and forth to the city under the bridge, and while suspended in the air,
could see the farther bridges on either side .Their images entranced me and I felt that when I returned home, they would find their way into my work
Though I had taken some photographs of bridge construction and tried out ink and watercolor interpretations of them, they didn't feel right.
The first bridges that I actually painted when I returned to Israel, were sometimes small drawn images in a painting that was basically abstract and very similar
in feeling to the work that I had done before my trip.
In others, the triangular shapes created by the girders became basic element in the composition that was fundamentally formal and 'cool'.
Some emphasized the curve of the bridge cables.
All had in common an "aesthetic" look, a concern with formal problems. None of them is realistic and none attempted to describe
a particular bridge. None were done from sketches or from photographs.
The bridge images appeared to enter the paintings subliminally, like the smile of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.