Aviva Uri

Aviva Uri was born in 1922 in Safed

Aviva Uri was born in Safed in 1922 to Zionist parents who had come to the Land of Israel from the Russian Empire in 1921. Her mother died soon after her birth, and she was sent to live with her aunt in Tel Aviv. Her relations with her father and stepmother were difficult.

She attended the Borochov school and in 1935 began studying at the Levinsky Seminary for girls. As a young woman she focused mainly on dance and took classes with Gertrude Kraus. In 1941 she married Moshe Levin, and their daughter Rachel was born in 1946.

In 1943 she studied painting with Moshe Castel, and in 1944 she began studying with the draftsman David Hendler, whom she later married. Her abstract drawings on paper, made without color, link her to the New Horizons group. She drew influence from Japan and China rather than Paris.

Her free line influenced artists such as Raffi Lavie and Moshe Gershuni. She received the Dizengoff Prize and, in 1976, the Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art. She died in Tel Aviv in 1989.