Nir Hod

Nir Hod was born in 1970 in Tel Aviv

Nir Hod was born in Tel Aviv in 1970. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York.

Hod started out in video and also makes sculpture, but his realist paintings are the core of his work. In 1993 he showed self-portraits dressed as female IDF soldiers and nurses in the exhibition "Anti-Pathos" at the Israel Museum. His themes include beauty, death, bereavement, love, identity and excess, and his use of kitsch drew criticism.

In 1999 he released the album "Last Letters to Anna" with musician Yaron Bachar, singing love songs he wrote and composed. His "Genius" series showed young aristocrats with scornful faces and cigarettes. His 2012 series "Mother" painted a woman taken from a Nazi photograph of the Warsaw Ghetto, placing her in a glamorous setting.

His painting "The Soldiers" from 1993 sold at a Sotheby's auction in New York in March 2006 for 48 thousand dollars. In 2025 the fashion house Dior acquired a work by Hod for its Fifth Avenue flagship store. He is married to Stephanie, they have a son, and they live in Tel Aviv.