Yaacov Agam

Yaacov Agam – Important impulses from the Bauhaus and Max Bill

Yaacov Agam was born Yaacov Gipstein on 11 May 1928 in Rischon LeZion, then part of Mandate Palestine. The son of a rabbi and Kabbalist, he grew up in a strictly religious home, which he only left in 1949 - one year after the founding of the State of Israel. He had already studied in Jerusalem as a master student under the Bauhaus student Mordecai Ardon at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and after moving to Switzerland he attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Zurich, where the former Bauhaus teacher Johannes Itten was his teacher. The Bauhaus thus exerted a certain influence on Yaacov Agam's art through these intermediaries, but he also drew important inspiration from the theories of the Swiss architect Max Bill. As a result, he developed an oeuvre early on that would later be regarded as a cornerstone of kinetic art.

Size and time as determining factors in art

Yaacov Agam arrived in Paris in 1951, where he initially found it difficult to gain a foothold: He only had a low income, lived in meagre circumstances, and did not understand the language. However, his encounters with great artistic personalities such as Marc Chagall and Fernand Léger proved extremely fruitful. Agam became increasingly enthusiastic about the grand ideas of time and movement and their relationship to each other. He attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and was finally able to open his first solo exhibition at the Craven Gallery in 1953, took part in the first international exhibition of kinetic art in 1955 at the Galerie Denise René under the motto The Movement, as well as Documenta III in Kassel in 1964. Yaacov Agam's increasing recognition as a leading representative of kinetic art was already in full swing when he met the Romanian-French sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi, and this contact brought him the final and decisive step in his development towards maturity. 

Painting as the movement of light and colour

Yaacov Agam endeavours to set painting in motion and uses various media for his kinetic experiments, which he combines to create sophisticated installations. The artist favours creating large sculptures, his most famous being the 9.75-metre-high Hannukah Menorah in New York, which reflects his Jewish heritage. Acrylic is a frequently used material, which Agam particularly appreciates for its translucency of colour and light. Yaacov Agam has received prizes and awards for his art, including the Prize for Research in Art at the São Paolo Biennale in 1963 and the First Prize at the Festival Internationale de la peinture in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1970. UNESCO honoured his educational work with children with the Jan Amos Comenius Medal.

Yaacov Agam lives and works in Tel Aviv.