Head, watercolor on paper, 49 × 69 cm, signed and dated 1993.Raffi Lavie (Levy) was born in Ramat Gan. After his military service he painted in the Achziv area and studied art with Ludwig Wolpert and Kosso Eloul. In 1960 he held his first solo exhibition at Galeria Rina in Jerusalem. In 1965 Lavie founded the “Ten Plus” (10+) group, an avant-garde alternative to the dominance of the “New Horizons” group. Under his leadership, the group presented ten group exhibitions that reflected the impact of American art—especially Pop Art—on Israeli artists.Lavie was for many years a central teacher at the Midrasha School of Art (Ramat HaSharon, later Beit Berl), where he fostered a circle of artists inclined toward conceptual art. His work, together with that of his students, served curator Sarah Breitberg-Semel in formulating the “Poor Materials” (Dalut HaHomer) thesis presented in 1986, in which Lavie was positioned as an emblematic figure of the quintessential Israeli “sabra.”In the late 1950s he produced his first significant works—drawings whose style was close to children’s art. In the early 1960s he began exhibiting works that reveal affinities with Arieh Aroch and Aviva Uri. From the mid-1960s onward, his practice increasingly incorporated glue/collage on plywood panels, and the use of found visual imagery such as street posters, magazine photographs, and magazine photographs, among other materials.