Nachum Gutman

Nahum Gutman (1898-1980) was born in 1898 in Talenshet, Russia. In 1905 he immigrated to Israel and settled with his family in Tel Aviv. Later in 1920 he left to Vienna, Austria to study sculpting. He traveled to Berlin and to Paris where he participated in an exhibition with the artists Chagall, Modigliani and Soutin. Gutman had exhibitions in New York, Boston, South Africa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He had once said “I paint out of my impression of the view and our surroundings, and as for the sea shore – it runs across our entire country.” The sea is a central motive in Gutman’s work. As a child he had watched the sea extensively through his school window and every arriving ship carried with it exciting new smells and mysterious. Inspired by the Eastern Persian miniatures, Gutman created two dimensional, flat colored fields placed one above the other while ignoring the formal perspective. He experimented with distinctive colors combinations to form rich colored carpet.