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Igael Tumarkin, Israeli painter, sculptor, theoretician, stage designer, born in Germany, 1933

Igael Tumarkin (Peter Martin Gregor Heinrich Hellberg) was born in Dresden, Germany. His father, Martin Hellberg, was a German theater actor and director. In 1935, his mother, Berta Gurevitch immigrated with him to the Land of Israel, where she married Herzl Tumarkin, who legally adopted him. In 1940, the family moved to Bat Yam. In 1946-1948, he joined the Merchant Navy. In 1952-1954, he served with the Israeli navy. In 1954, he studied sculpture with Rudi Lehmann. In 1955-1956, he traveled to East Berlin and worked for the Berliner Ensemble theater company under Bertolt Brecht. In 1957, he worked in stage design in Amsterdam, where he met his wife, Naomi. In 1958-1960, he lived in Paris. In 1962, he traveled to Japan and the United States to study Japanese drawing techniques. During the Yom Kippur War, Tumarkin accompanied IDF troops as a military reporter and photographer.

Tumarkin was influenced by Dada, pop art, avantgarde protest art and the iron sculpture of Julio Gonzalez. Upon his return to Israel in 1961, he became a driving force behind the break from lyric abstraction. He began to create assemblages of scrap metal and found objects in a brutal Expressionist style. His sculpture combines "materials from life" – earth and stones - with modern industrial materials such as metal and glass, and geometric shapes. Tumarkin's monuments can be seen in Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Beersheva, Arad and other Israeli cities.

Education

1954 Studied with Rudi Lehmann, Ein-Hod

Awards And Prizes

1963 First Prize for Memorial of Hulekat
1968 Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1968 Memorial to Sailors, Haifa
1971 Prize for Memorial for "Holocaust and Resurrection", Tel Aviv
1978 Biennale for Drawing, Rijeka, Yugoslavia
1984 Award from the President of the Italian Republic
1985 Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa
1990 Guest of the Japan Foundation
1992 August Rodin Prize, The International Sculpture Competition of the Open Museum, Hakone, Japan
1997 Award of Excellence, the President of the Federal Republic of Germany
1998 Sussman Prize for Artists Depicting the Horrors of the Holocaust, Vienna, Austria
2004 Prize for Sculpture, Ministry of Education and Culture