Collection: Michael Rozenvain

Michael Rozenvain was born in Kiev in the Ukraine in 1963. He attended art school in Kiev and later continued his studies at the Lvov Academy of Applied Art. He immigrated to Israel in 1990 and has since had a number of one – man shows as well as participating in group exhibitions. At the same time, he has contributed large Murals and decorative elements to public buildings as well as Monumental displays in hotels and libraries.

On one’s first encounter with the work of Michael Rozenvain, one’s mind turns to the palimpsest of many generations past – that is, the parchment or tablet on which an earlier drawing or writing has been erased to make way for another. This impression quickly vanishes and is replaced by an ultra-modern concept of windows (a computer technique), in which the major element, a specific landscape or the ever-present vibrant flowers in a vase, almost entirely covers but not quite, a second, third, or even fourth scene enclosed in a framework or a window. The sensual language and texture takes precedence over the subject matter but the flowers are always present in all their rich full-blown glory. The Mediterranean street scene, the cafe orchestra, the piano, and especially the pale-skinned reclining nude women, fill or submerge the canvas in a series of what is certainly the contents of the artist’s sub-conscious as well as his conscious memory, for he is reluctant to let them disappear. Their vitality is unquestionably their foremost feature and stays in our mind’s eye for long after we have left them behind.