Art and designמיכאיל גרובמן

Michail Grobman

Michail Grobman was a Moscow-born Israeli painter and poet who founded the Leviathan artists' group in Jerusalem in 1975.

1939 to 2025Founding the Leviathan groupThe Second Russian Avant-GardeRussian-language poetry

Born: 21 September 1939, Moscow
Died: 23 November 2025, Tel Aviv
Occupation: poet, painter, publisher, graphic artist

Michail Grobman was born in 1939 in Moscow

Grobman was born in Moscow on 21 September 1939 to an engineer's family. His father served in the Red Army during the war, and his mother came from a religious home. He did not finish high school and took odd jobs, including construction work, while he painted and wrote.

In the 1960s he was an active member of the Second Russian Avant-Garde in the Soviet Union. He held his first solo show in Leningrad in 1959, and a 1965 show in Moscow included works on Jewish themes. In 1967 he joined the Moscow Artists Union.

He emigrated to Israel in 1971 and settled in Jerusalem. In 1975 he founded the Leviathan group with Avraham Ofek and Shmuel Ackerman, and edited a Russian-language journal of the same name. From 1983 he lived and worked in Tel Aviv.

In 2001 he shared the Dizengoff Prize for Painting. In 2014 a large exhibition of his work opened at the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow. He was married to Irina Vrubel-Golubkina, and his children are architect Yasha Jacob Grobman and film producer Lati Grobman. He died on 23 November 2025.