Art and designזויה צ'רקסקי

Zoya Cherkassky

Zoya Cherkassky is a Ukrainian-born Israeli painter and sculptor whose work deals with identity, immigration and Jewish and Israeli culture.

born 1976Co-founding the New Barbizon GroupPaintings of Soviet immigrant lifeThe Judaica Collection exhibitionWorks on the October 7 attack

Occupation: sculptor, painter, artist
Education: Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, Beit Berl College

Zoya Cherkassky was born in 1976 in Kyiv

Zoya Cherkassky was born in Kyiv in 1976. She studied at the Central Art School in Kyiv from age 10. She and her family immigrated to Israel in 1991, two weeks before the Soviet Union collapsed.

In Israel she studied art at Thelma Yellin High School in Givatayim. She chose not to enlist in the IDF. In 1997 she began studying at the Midrasha art school of Beit Berl College, where she worked with Ruth Nemet as the duo Ruti and Zoya until 2001.

Her 2003 show Judaica Collection drew criticism and a request to cancel it. In 2006 she showed Action Painting at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. From 2005 to 2009 she lived and worked in Berlin.

In 2010 she founded the New Barbizon Group with 4 other Soviet-born painters. Her series on her Soviet childhood and on immigration, Pravda, followed. After the October 7, 2023 attack she made works on it, shown at Jewish museums in New York and Vienna.