Pinchas Cohen Gan

Pinchas Cohen Gan was born in 1942 in Meknes

Pinchas Cohen Gan was born in 1942 in Meknes, Morocco, to an observant Jewish family. His father, Moshe HaCohen, gave up painting to work as a merchant, and his mother, Rivka Gan, taught French. In 1949 he immigrated to Israel with his parents and four brothers and grew up in Kiryat Bialik.

As a youth he worked in construction to help his family and studied sculpture with Aharon Ashkenazi. He joined Hashomer Hatzair in 1954 and served in the army in Nahal. In 1962 he began studying at Bezalel but left after about a week for lack of money, then studied with Marcel Janco and Michael Gross at Oranim.

He returned to Bezalel in 1967 and was wounded in a 1968 attack in the Mahane Yehuda Market. In the 1970s he created art actions, including an exhibition of etchings in a kibbutz cowshed in 1972 and works at the Dead Sea, near Jericho and on Israel's borders. These were shown at the Israel Museum in 1974.

In the second half of the 1970s he studied at Columbia University in New York, among others with Meyer Schapiro. He exhibited at galleries in New York and Washington, D.C. He later received the Sandberg Prize, a ministry lifetime achievement prize and the Israel Prize.