Encounter in the Atelier: Kupferman and His Teachers

Moshe Kupferman’s course of studies, which stretched over many years due to the circumstances of his life, was essentially one of self-teaching—the path of a young man who, while adapting to the harsh normalcy of a new reality and acquiring a new language and a profession, yielded to the aspiration rising within him until it became a necessity—to be a painter. Along this course he had several encounters, some accidental and others well-planned, with individuals who were his teachers; the teachers of a self-taught artist: from Oscar Hendler who noticed his inclination, and Moshe Barash who acquainted him with the old masters—both at the Bavarian DP camp before his immigration to Israel; through Batya and Yehoshua Grossbard and Chaim Atar (also a self-taught artist) at Ein Harod; to his teachers-mentors at the seminars in Kibbutz Na’an – Zaritsky, Stematsky, and Kiewe (another self-taught artist!), who guided him towards the abstract. At the culmination of these fragmentary, swift, yet crucial experiences (which yielded no sign of a distinctive influence!) his faith in abstract painting was reinforced when he came across the painting of such artists as Fautrier, Soulages, and Bram van Velde in Paris.

The exhibition offers a peek, albeit brief, into the work of Kupferman’s teachers-mentors, alongside drawings created by Kupferman himself in his immediate surroundings (depicting people and landscapes) and within the secret realms of his imagination and memory in those years of the pre-Kupferman Kupferman.

Yona Fischer, July 2006