Avraham Ofek (1935-1990)

Avraham Ofek was born in 1935 in Bulgaria, and immigrated to Israel in 1949. He began working in print during his art studies in Italy. In the 1960s he worked mainly in etching and lithography, and created figurative works with imagery of animals, family scenes and symbolic landscape depictions. In 1975-1976 he printed many of these etches at the Jerusalem Print Workshop. During the 1970s, when he engaged less in print, Ofek was an active member of the Leviathan group, where his art became avant-garde and associated with Jewish mysticism. His works can be found among the collections of the Israel Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Haifa Museum, Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, and others.

Education
1958-1960 Academy of Fine Arts, Florence, Italy

Awards And Prizes
1969 Jerusalem Prize for Painting
1990 Mordechaesi Ish Shalom Lifetime Achievement Awarnd, Jerusalem Artists’ House, Jerusalem

Solo exhibitions (selection in the field of print)
1964 Drawings and Copper Engravings, Dugith Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1991 Print of Avraham Ofek – On the Occasion of the First Anniversary of his Death, Wilfrid Israel Museum, Kibbutz Hazorea
1991 Prints and Miniature Sculpture, Arad Museum, Arad
1991 Prints and Miniature Sculpture, Yad Labanim Museum, Petach Tikva
2004 Prints, Joseph and Rebecca Mayerhof Cultural Center, The David Yellin Hebrew Teachers’ State Institute, Jerusalem
2014 Hot and Cold Elijah, Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem
2016 Haifa University, Haifa

Group exhibitions (selection in the field of print)
1965 Graphic Works by Contemporary Israeli artists – New Acquisitions, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1966 Israeli Painters 6, Traveling Exhibition, Israel
1979 The Israeli Grafotec, Shaar Zion Library, Beit Ariella, Tel Aviv
1994 The Printer’s Imprint: Twenty Years with the Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2001 Drawing Aspects in Print, Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem
2005 Red Flag, Wolfgang Meyer Etching Workshop, Kibbutz Nirim
20087 On a Small Scale, Jerusalem Print Workshop, Jerusalem