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Eliahu Gat, painter, Israeli, born in Russian Empire, 1919-1987

Eliahu Gat (originally Gulkowitz) was born to a traditional Jewish family in Dukshitz, Minsk. In 1926, the family moved to Poland and settled in Vileyka in the province of Vilna. Gat studied at a Polish gymnasium and belonged to a Zionist youth group. In 1937, he immigrated to the Land of Israel and began to study architecture at the Technion in Haifa. In 1939-1942, he lived on Kibbutz Nir-Haim and Kibbutz Maoz Haim. In 1942, he joined the British Army, serving in the Land of Israel and North Africa. During this period, he studed art at the Avni Institute and the Academy of Art in Cairo. After his release, he began to study painting at the Studia in Tel Aviv under Yehezkel Streichman and Avigdor Stematsky. In 1952, he went to study art in Paris.

In the 1950s, Gat was one of the founders of the Group of Ten, which made a point of depicting the local Israeli scene, realistically portrayed, as opposed to the abstract art and universalism of the New Horizons group. He was living in Old Jaffa at the time. In 1964, he founded the Art Institute in Bat Yam. In 1973, he founded the Aclim group together with his wife, Rachel Shavit, which emphasized Israeli nature and society over the avant-garde art that began to take root after the Yom Kippur War. In 1980-1981, Gat was chairman of the Tel Aviv Association of Painters and Sculptors. In 1984, he took sick, sharply curtailing his artistic output. Social and political themes dominate Gat's early work. In the 1960s, he moved toward abstraction with an emphasis on color and brushstroke. His later work, from the end of the 1960s, is mainly figurative, featuring landscapes and nudes.

Education

1938-39 Haifa Technion, Architecture
1945 at studio with Avni, Tel Aviv
1946 Art Academy, Cairo, Egypt
1946-48 with Streichman and Stematsky
1952 Ecole de Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
1954-1953 HaMidrasha for Painting Teachers, Tel Aviv

Teaching

1964-1978 Art Institute, Bat Yam Director and Art Teacher
From 1965 Teachers' College of Art, Ramat Hasharon
1971 Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design, Jerusalem
1979 Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design, Jerusalem

Awards And Prizes

1949 Prize in the name of six artists who fell in the war of Independence
1959 Histadrut Prize for Art
1972 Grant for Artist-Teacher, Ministry of Education and Culture
1978 Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa