Pinchas Zinovich’s solo exhibition Love Poem marking nine years since the passing of Zinovich, Chelouche Gallery presents a series of about 25 works, watercolor on paper, drawn in the last two years of his life, 2006-2007. The series, firstly to be exhibited, is comprised of rare drawings that include poems written by him.
Pinchas Zinovich’s (1943-2007) works are expressive and immediate, constantly moving between figuration and abstraction, carried out with extensive and dynamic movements; emotionally charged, colorfully intense, Zinovich developed a kind of sublimated “action painting”. His abstract works always contains a form on brinks of formation, while functions as an open riddle of his soul’s secrets – sometimes it depicts great joy of life and sometimes expressions of mental anxieties awaken by a severe injury during his military service in 1965.
One of the decoding keys to his paintings can be found in the works’ titles. The titles provide some sort of a literary dimension, and infuse the works with unique signification. As an Israeli abstract painter, he was the only one among his peers to keep a linguistic awareness and poetic vigilance. The title does not necessarily indicate on a clear motif, rather it functions as a poetic arrow, directing the observer towards a certain mindset.
The exhibition “Love Poem” presents a rare body of work in which Zinovich integrated poems he composed, while writing them within the drawings-frames. These works enable an exceptional glimpse to the aspect that still remained intact in Zinovich’s oeuvre – the relations between the literary-narrative dimension and the abstract element in his drawings. Some of these poems, titled simply “Love Poem”, are addressed to the “blue eyed” who “keeps him safe from the null”, to his wife and partner Irit.
Pinchas Zinovich, 1943-2007, born in Kibbutz Dafna, graduated from Bezalel Academy for Art and Design (1970-1967). Until his decease he lived and worked in Kibbutz Tzuba. He won the Minister of Science, Culture & Sport Prize, 2002. Zinovich had frequently exhibited in Chelouche gallery, Tel Aviv, and in numerous solo and group exhibitions, amongst them is a solo exhibition at the Tel aviv Museum of Art, 1994 (curator: Ellen Ginton), and a retrospective exhibition at the Ein-Harod Museum of art, 2005, (curator: Yaniv Shapira).
