View artwork »

View exhibitions »

View videos and articles »

Visit our Information Center to browse the artist file »

File includes:

Articles 208
Artwork reproduction 149
Exhibition invitations 79

Tsibi Geva, an Israeli painter and sculpture, was born in 1951, in Kibbutz Ein Shemer, Israel.
In the early 1980's Geva began using motifs and imagery from local Arab culture, while emphasizing racial stereotypes. In an installation he presented at the Kibbutz Gallery in 1982, for example, there were caricature images of un-identified Arabs, alongside the image of a wounded lioness, painted expressively and with heavy impasto. In later works such as "Umm al - Fahm" (1983) or "Jaffa, Arara, Goara, Haifa" (1984), Geva uses "decorative" text which actualizes the existence of the Arab minority in Israel and undermined the concept of Israeli and Westernizes "taste".
After studying art in New York in the late 1980's, the work of Geva featured a series of large-scale abstract paintings, which implemented similar local motifs. A series of Kafiyah paintings, for example, Geva integrated the values of American abstract art, using the kafiyah as a folklore-political motif, as well as an abstract grid. During the 1990's Geva created sculptural elements, such as iron grates, using similar motifs.
Tsibi Geva lives and works in Tel Aviv.

Education

1976-79 Advanced studies, State Art Teacher's Training College, Ramat Hasharon
1985-87 Studio School, New York

Teaching

1979 Art Teachers College, Ramat Hasharon
1990 Haifa University, art department

Awards And Prizes

1984 Sharett Scholarship for Advanced Studies Abroad, America-Israel Cultural Foundation
1985 Beatrice Kolliner Prize for a Young Israeli Artist, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1994 Prize for Fine Art, Ministry of Science and the Arts
1996 Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Isracard Prize, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv
1997 Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Jurors: Yigal Zalmona (chairman), Dganit Berest, Yona Fischer
2001 George and Janet Jaffin Prize for Excellence in Plastic Arts, America-Israel Cultural Foundation
2003 Aptowitzer Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement in Contemporary Creative Arts, Haifa Museum of Art
2004 The Mendel and Eva Pundik Foundation Prize for an Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv