Larry Abramson

Larry Abramson was born in 1954 in Durban

Larry Abramson was born in 1954 in Durban, South Africa. In 1961 his family moved to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. He went to the Hebrew University Secondary School, and in 1970 he was one of the signers of a letter by high school seniors.

In 1973 he studied a foundation course at the Chelsea College of Art in London. Back in Israel he worked as a printer and exhibition curator at the Jerusalem Print Workshop until 1986. His first solo show opened in 1975.

In the 1980s his paintings drew on symbols of European modernism, above all the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich. His 1993 and 1994 series Tsooba depicted the ruins of a Palestinian village near Kibbutz Tzova, a site Joseph Zaritsky had painted without them. He also showed The Pile, charcoal drawings linked to the painter Felix Nussbaum.

He joined the art department of Bezalel in 1984 and became its head in 1992. From 2002 he taught at Shenkar, where he headed the School of Art from 2013 to 2016. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art held a large exhibition of his work in 2010.

He was a founder of Artists Without Walls, a joint group of Israeli and Palestinian artists. In 2019 he resigned from the Council for Higher Education in protest. He moved from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv after 2011 and is a father of 3.