Yitzchak Nir

Yitzchak Nir was born in 1943 in Merhavia

Yitzchak Nir was born on November 1, 1943, in Kibbutz Merhavia. His parents, Yeshayahu and Pnina Nachfolger (Nir), came to the country from Galicia in 1926. He went to high school in Merhavia and Sarid, and as a teenager in the air cadets he flew a glider and a Piper Cub solo.

He joined the Air Force flight school in 1961 and qualified as a fighter pilot in 1963. He became a flight instructor in 1965 and flew in the Six-Day War, the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War.

In 1971 he joined El Al, where he served as first officer, captain, instructor and examiner on Boeing aircraft until 2010. He then worked as an aviation safety inspector until he resigned in 2012. He cofounded the industrial laser startup Technir in 1982 and led the road safety group We Drive Differently from 1989 to 1994.

Nir studied painting with Tamar Binyamov and Marcel Janco, and later with Ernst Fuchs and others. He works in drawing, gouache, oil, acrylic and mixed media, and has shown his work in Israel and abroad. Since 2012 he has managed and curated the Neeman Gallery in Tel Aviv, where he lives with his partner.