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Yaacov
Agam Biography
Agam is one of
the pioneer creators of the kinetic movement in art as well as its most
outstanding contemporary representative. Agam was born in 1928 a son of
a Rabbi of Rishon LeZion (Israel), who devoted his
life to the study of Jewish religious matters and wrote books. Agam
considers himself somehow as a visual continuation of his father's
quest for spirituality. Agam studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, and in Switzerland
at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule and the Zurich University.
After arriving to Paris in 1951, Agam held his first one man
exhibition with a great success in 1953 This exhibition consisted
totally of kinetic, movable and transformable paintings, which actually
was the first one-man show in art history exclusively devoted to
kinetic art.
A passionate
experimenter, Agam deals with such problems as the 4th dimension,
simultaneity and time in the visual, plastic arts, and has extended his
experiments to application in the fields of literature, music and art
theory.
His works
express a concept that breaks away with the established way of
expressing reality in limited, static way. In his works, he strives to
demonstrate the principle of reality as a continuous
"becoming" rather than static "graven image." His
paintings "Double Metamorphosis 11" in the Museum of Modern
Art in New York and "Transparent Rhythms 11 "in the Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C. give the best example of his polymorphic painting. His
works are placed in many public places including "Communication x
9" on the Michigan Avenue in Chicago (1983), "Communication:
Night and Day" at the AT&T building in New York (1974),
"Super Lines Volumes" at the Pare Floral in Paris (1971), and
his murals "Peace" and "Life" arc installed at the
Parliament of Europe in Strasbourg (1977).
Agam has
expressed the new concepts in monumental works as in his "Jacob's
Ladder" which forms the ceiling of the National Convention House
in Jerusalem He created a "floating museum", including all
the artworks for public areas and cabins, for the Carnival Cruise
Line's luxury cruise ship "Celebration" (1 987). His
fire-water fountain in Dizengoff
Square in Tel Aviv (1986) streams water,
fire, and music -elements of flux and life which cannot be static - as
its colored elements rotate in this multidimensional monumental
work.
For the Elysee Palace
in Paris,
with the request of President Georges Pompidou Agam created in 1972 a
whole environmental of the Salon with the walls covered with
polymorphic murals of changing images a kinetic ceiling, moving
transparent colored doors and a kinetic carpet on which he placed a
sculpture. It embraces viewers: they are no longer looking at a framed,
fixed scene, but rather arc moving within an artistic space which
changes constantly according to their shifting position and point of
view. Similar attempt was made for the concert hall, Forum Leverkusen in
Germany
in 1970.
Agam created
many environmental sculptures, including "Hundred Gates" in
the garden of the residence of the President of Israel in Jerusalem,
"3 x 3 Interplay" installed at the Julliard School of Music
at the Lincoln Center and "Wings of the Heart" at J. F.
Kennedy airport in New York. In 1984 he made a sculpture "Beating
Heart" for the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. In 1988 he created a
transparent torah ark for the Hebrew
Union College
in New York, and monumental
multidimensional sculpture at the Crystal Palace Hotel in Nassau, Bahamas.
In 1987, he
created a memorial at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem for the victims of the
holocaust. In 1991 he created a sculpture 'Tree of Life" and a
room for meditation at the Haidrah Yeshiva at the Wailing
Wall Plaza
in Jerusalem.
He also made 14 stained glass windows for the Holocaust study center of
Emunah Women of America building in Jerusalem.
In the new
district of La Defense in Paris,
Agam created a monumental musical fountain (1977), with its pool made
of polymorphic mosaic surface. It is comprised of 66 vertical water
jets shooting water up to 14 meters; the fountain was further enhanced
with the addition of five new triple tulip jets in 1991. Another
fire-water fountain was inaugurated in 1991 at the Tampa Convention
Center in Florida.
Other monumental works, include the painting of the entire building
facade of Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles (1984) and 36-poor Villa Regina
building in Florida (1983) He made a large mural for Port Authority Bus
Terminal in New York, commission gained through an international
competition, in 1984.
His kinetic
sculpture "Star of Peace" was presented as the Ben-Gurion
Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Understanding Between the
Peoples of the Middle East to President
Anwar Sadat, Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Jimmy Carter
in 1979.
His visual
education method and non-verbal educational system, meant to increase
the creative and intellectual abilities of the children by the usage of
visual alphabet as a mother tongue, is implemented in pre-schools and
kindergartens in Israel.
In 1996, Agam was awarded the Jan Amos Comenius Medal 1996 from the
UNESCO "for having devised a particularly effective method of
visual teaching for children."
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