Avraham Eilat

Avraham Eilat was born in 1939 in Tel Aviv

Avraham Eilat was born in Tel Aviv in 1939. He attended the Herzliya Gymnasium and was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. As a pupil he studied painting with Arie Allweil, who invited him to work with him in Tzfat in 1954.

After his army service in the Nahal, he joined Kibbutz Shamir and was a member from 1960 to 1978. There he worked as a shepherd beside the painter Moshe Cagan, his adoptive father in the kibbutz. Nature and the local landscape shaped the themes of his art.

From 1962 to 1965 he studied part time at the High School of Painting in Tel Aviv. In 1966 he joined the Atelier 17 etching workshop in Paris. In 1970 a grant from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation took him to St. Martin's School of Art in London, where he studied sculpture under Anthony Caro and began making experimental films.

He taught art at several colleges, including Bezalel and the Technion, and headed the photography department at the WIZO design academy in Haifa. He helped found the Israeli Biennale of Photography in Ein Harod and the Pyramida center in Haifa, which he later chaired. His solo exhibitions were held at the Israel Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and abroad.

He lives in Ein Hod with his partner Margol Guttman and works in Haifa and Ein Hod.