Zohar Tal Inbar
Figurative Painter 
E-Mail - zohartalinbar@gmail.com

Kibbutz Basilica / Zohar Tal Inbar

Tribute exhibition to Avraham Omri (Kibbutz Shaar Haamkim) and Avraham Amarant-Tushek (Kibbutz Mizra).

The exhibition is dedicated to my late brother Dan Tal who passed away from an illness in April 2022.

 

In this series - 17 panoramic paintings under the influence of classical European Renaissance painting, and the collective iconographic style in the Kibbutz of the 40s-60s of 20th century.

This style was inspired by the epic symbolism of Soviet posters during the communist era,

From Social realism and European Expressionism.

When I was a little girl in Kibbutz Mizra, when Tushek would meet me, he would run his hand through my hair and tell me -

Do you know there is a book where it says that God is a woman? The name of the book is Sefer Hazohar (as my name).

Tushek was a painter and artist who decorated the walls and windows of Mizra's old dining room every holiday.

His colorful paintings depicted images of everyday life as well as events associated with holidays and seasons. He worked in a technique that resembled stained glass when he created watercolor sketches on parchment paper and works

painted in a mixed technique on plywood or wrapping paper.

This art is part of my childhood landscape.

The external decorations on the wall of the gallery at Shaar Haamakim - colorful reliefs in the segrefito style,

also speak the local iconographic language.

Avraham Omri and Avraham Amarant-Tushek- spoke this common language –

the kibbutz mother tongue.

In the wall paintings in the dining room of my childhood, ideal images appeared - strong, handsome, hardworking men and beautiful women, celebrating together their modest new home with manual labor and festive ceremonies.

As a child, Tushek the painter told me about a pastoral agricultural reality just like in Arcadia -

the home of the god Pan from Greek mythology, or in the harmonious Renaissance paradise

where shepherds and shepherdesses roamed the fields, alongside sheep and birds in an endless dance of love.

However, in this series I chose to tell a story that did not get to appear on the walls of the dining room.

This is the other story of my childhood - my father came to the kibbutz from Germany when he was 22 years old in 1962.

He was a Christian German soldier who decided to defect the army and flee his country to join the Jewish people. When he got off the ship at Haifa port, no one was waiting for him. He went to the border police and there they referred him to a representative of the Jewish agency who sent him to Kibbutz Mizra, where he met my mother. She was a native of the kibbutz who was a beloved kindergarten teacher. My father's arrival at the kibbutz did not go smoothly - although most of the members of the kibbutz welcomed him with open arms, there were some families who did not like the idea of a German Christian hanging around their house, among them my mother's father who fled the terror of the Germans in Poland with his three sisters. But my mother did not give up her love for the new stranger. Following stormy kibbutz meetings that dealt with the issue, my father left the kibbutz and my mother left after him. They lived for a year in another kibbutz and then returned to Mizra when the winds calmed down.

My father's conversion process that began shortly after his arrival was complex and only completed after I was already born.

When the conversion was over, my father and mother got married in a kosher Jewish ceremony while I waited at the baby's home.

The Christian art and iconography that were inherent in the culture from which my father came was assimilated into me as well. When my Christian grandmother Margarita would come to visit Israel, we would go to the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth which was a holy and very important place for her, and probably for me as well.

In my paintings, kibbutz life appears through the eyes of a foreign immigrant, whose place in society is not guaranteed, and he is required to shed his original identity in order to gain a new one. Even if the act was done according to his personal will,

it was certainly not easy. At the same time, the beauty of the place he arrived at and his desire to fit in, as well as the special people there, cast a spell on the stranger and wraped him with joy.

I tried to trace the style of the "Abrahams" –(Avraham amarant- Tushek and Avraham Omri), the basilica painters of my childhood whose works were characterized by a strong expressionist line, internal division of spaces and geometric shapes, thinking that my paintings would take the place of the frescoes in the basilica / dining room / gallery.