Yadid Rubin, born 1938, lives and works in Kibutz Givat Haim Yichud. He arrives at his studio every morning, until noontime. He paints with sweeping dynamics that carries him into the climax, and then he brakes away from the painting, abandons the studio and returns the next day. Time and time again.
Rubin's paintings express remarkably and beautifully the meaning of the allusive
Term “Israeli characteristics”: the landscape of the kibutz, vast plowed fields, plantations filled with fruitful trees, columns of cypresses, houses and tractors. Small buildings and open spaces long gone live on in his paintings, free from dependence on the visible to the eye. “I paint the landscape of the kibutz, but in fact these are the landscapes of the soul. I don't paint out of plain observation, but out of the accumulation of sensations and reactions to different conditions of nature”, says Rubin.
Rubin's approach to painting is very personal and with clear pictorial style, much like Michael Gross and Rubin's long personal friend- Uri Reizman. Apparent in Rubin's work are the impressionist influences of Van Gouch with whom Rubin corresponds through the image of landscape, and through pictorial work with thick layers of paint and shapes constructed out of brush strokes that appear to be thrown on the canvas with great restrained force. For Rubin, the landscape is a semantic field of signs, replacing the realistic and naturalistic conventions of forms. Like Van Gouch, his point of view is subjective; but contrasting the agonizing and religious perception of Van Gouch, Rubin's perception is secular, free and full of optimism.
Rubin paints sitting on the floor or standing across from a canvas that leans on a chair. He smears the paint with his bare hands, with a spatula, with brushes or strait from the tube. His style is intense and dense with lush brilliant colorfulness. The colorful patterns repeat themselves to create an organized totality. The fields of form and color are constructed of a repeating rhythm of lines, dote and circle. This rhythm balances the continuance pulse of vertical and horizontal into a harmonic structure reminiscent of jazz music, creating a strong sensation of vitality and abundance, which seem to want to break the limits of the canvas.
