Avraham Ofek (1935-1990) Bulgarian-Israeli
depicting partially the city of Acre, mixed technique on paper, signed lower right, along with the original receipt which has been stamped, dated and signed by the artist, the work framed and glazed, 34 cm x 49 cm.
Avraham Ofek was born in Burgas, Bulgaria, the third son of Dina and Yaakov Rubnov. Ofek's work portrayed social, national, and Jewish themes, as well as landscapes of Israel and especially of Jerusalem. For his work, Ofek won the Jerusalem Prize for painting in 1969. Arriving in Israel in 1949 and settled on Kibbutz Ein Hamifratz, where he studied painting under the tutelage of the painter Aryeh Rothman. His early work included images of animals, farm machinery, kibbutz scenes, scenes from the Wadi Ara region and from Jaffa, and images of laborers. In 1958 he went to Italy to continue his studies and to participate in the mural on a wall of the Accademia di Belle Arti ("Academy of Fine Arts") in Florence. Under the spell of the art of mural painting, which Ofek considered the primary medium of his work, he painted several of his best-known works, such as the mural on the wall of Beit Haam in Kfar Uria (1970), the mural in the Central Post Office in Jerusalem (1972) and the mural "Israel, a Shattered Dream", at Haifa University (1986-1987).