Yaacov
Agam
Agam is one of the pioneer creators of the kinetic
movement in art as well as its most outstanding
contemporary representative. Agam was born
in 1928 a son of a Rabbi of Rishon LeZion
(Israel), who devoted his life to the study of
Jewish religious matters and wrote books.
Agam considers himself somehow as a visual
continuation of his father's quest for
spirituality.
Agam studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art in
Jerusalem, and in Switzerland at the
Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule and the
Zurich University. After arriving to Paris
in 1951, Agam held his first one man
exhibition with a great success in 1953.
This exhibition consisted totally of kinetic,
movable and transformable paintings, which
actually was the first one-man show in art history
exclusively devoted to kinetic art.
A passionate experimenter, Agam deals with such
problems as the 4th dimension, simultaneity and
time in the visual, plastic arts, and has
extended his experiments to application in the
fields of literature, music and art theory.
His works express a concept that breaks away
with the established way of expressing reality
in limited, static way. In his works, he
strives to demonstrate the principle of reality
as a continuous "becoming" rather than static
"graven image." His paintings "Double
Metamorphosis 11" in the Museum of Modern Art in
New York and "Transparent Rhythms 11" in the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. give
the best example of his polymorphic
painting. His works are placed in many
public places including "Communication x 9" on
the Michigan Avenue in Chicago (1983),
"Communication: Night and Day" at the AT&T
building in New York (1974), "Super Lines
Volumes" at the Pare Floral in Paris (1971), and
his murals "Peace" and "Life" arc installed at
the Parliament of Europe in Strasbourg (1977).
Agam has expressed the new concepts in
monumental works as in his "Jacob's Ladder"
which forms the ceiling of the National
Convention House in Jerusalem. He created
a "floating museum", including all the artworks
for public areas and cabins, for the Carnival
Cruise Line's luxury cruise ship "Celebration"
(1987). His fire-water fountain in
Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv (1986) streams
water, fire, and music -- elements of flux and
life which cannot be static -- as its colored
elements rotate in this multidimensional
monumental work.
For the Elysee Palace in Paris, with the
request of President Georges Pompidou Agam
created in 1972 a whole environmental of the
Salon with the walls covered with polymorphic
murals of changing images, a kinetic ceiling,
moving transparent colored doors and a kinetic
carpet on which he placed a sculpture. It
embraces viewers: they are no longer looking at
a framed, fixed scene, but rather are moving
within an artistic space which changes
constantly according to their shifting position
and point of view. Similar attempt was
made for the concert hall, Forum Leverkusen in
Germany in 1970.
Agam created many environmental sculptures,
including "Hundred Gates" in the garden of the
residence of the President of Israel in
Jerusalem, "3 x 3 Interplay" installed at the
Julliard School of Music at the Lincoln Center
and "Wings of the Heart" at J. F. Kennedy
airport in New York. In 1984 he made a
sculpture "Beating Heart" for the Hadassah
Hospital in Jerusalem. In 1988 Agam
created a transparent torah ark for the Hebrew
Union College in New York, and monumental
multidimensional sculpture at the Crystal Palace
Hotel in Nassau, Bahamas.
In 1987, he created a memorial at the Wailing
Wall in Jerusalem for the victims of the
holocaust. In 1991 he created a sculpture
'Tree of Life" and a room for meditation at the
Haidrah Yeshiva at the Wailing Wall Plaza in
Jerusalem. He also made 14 stained glass windows
for the Holocaust study center of Emunah Women
of America building in Jerusalem.
In the new district of La Defense in Paris,
Agam created a monumental musical fountain
(1977) with its pool made of polymorphic mosaic
surface. It is comprised of 66 vertical
water jets shooting water up to 14 meters; the
fountain was further enhanced with the addition
of five new triple tulip jets in 1991.
Another fire-water fountain was inaugurated in
1991 at the Tampa Convention Center in
Florida. Other monumental works, include
the painting of the entire building facade of
Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles (1984) and
36-floor Villa Regina building in Florida
(1983). He made a large mural for the Port
Authority Bus Terminal in New York, a commission
gained through an international competition, in
1984.
His kinetic sculpture "Star of Peace" was
presented as the Ben-Gurion Award for an
Outstanding Contribution to Understanding
Between the Peoples of the Middle East to
President Anwar Sadat, Prime Minister Menachem
Begin and President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
Agam has delivered lectures concerning his
theories and experiments at many art schools,
conventions, universities and museums, and
during the year of 1968 he was a guest-lecturer
at Harvard University, where he conducted a
seminar and course "Advanced Exploration in
Visual Communication".
International recognition has been widespread:
Prize for Artistic Research at the Sao Paolo
Biennale (1963), Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts
et Lettres (1974), Honorary Doctorate of
Philosophy, Tel Aviv University (1975), Medal of
the Council of Europe (1977), Commandeur de
l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1985), Sandberg
Prize from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1985),
Palette d'Or at the International Festival at
Cagnes-surMer (1985), and the Grand Prize at the
First International Biennale in Nagoya, Japan,
ARTECH '89 (1989). He has participated in shows
all over the world and has had many one-man
exhibitions, including the retrospective
exhibition held at the Musee National d'art
Modeme in Paris (1972), which was then shown at
the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Stadtische
Kunsthalle in Dusseldorf, and Tel Aviv
Museum. Another large-scale retrospective
exhibit was held at the Guggenheim Museum in New
York (1980).
He had a large one-man exhibition at the Museum
of Pontoise (1975), the Palm Spring Desert
Museum, California, on an occasion of the
inauguration of the museum (1976), the Museum of
Art Birmingham, Alabama (1976), the Museo de
Arte Modemo, Mexico (1976), the National Museum
of Art, Cape Town, South Africa (1977).
The retrospective exhibition was held at the
lsetan Museum in Tokyo, Daimaru Museum in Osaka
and Kawasaki City Museum in Japan (1989), and at
the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos
Aires Argentina (1996). He also held an
exhibition "Selected Suites" at the Jewish
Museum, New York (1975) and has had many one-man
shows in art galleries since 1953.
His visual education method and non-verbal
educational system, meant to increase the
creative and intellectual abilities of the
children by the usage of visual alphabet as a
mother tongue, is implemented in pre-schools and
kindergartens in Israel. In 1996, Agam was
awarded the Jan Amos Comenius Medal 1996 from
the UNESCO "for having devised a particularly
effective method of visual teaching for
children."
Saper Galleries has been representing the
artist Yaacov Agam since 1978.
Copyright © 2003
Agam, All Rights Reserved.
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