User:Poulou2000/Avshalom Okashi

Avshalom Okashi (1916-80) was an Israeli abstract painter.

Biography
Avshalom Okashi was born in 1916, in Rishon Lezion. He is undoubtedly one of the original painters in the history of Israeli art. His parents, Yehudit and Joseph Okashi had immigrated from Yemen. When he was one and a half years old his father died, and he was raised by his uncle in Rishon Lezion. He took as his example and model his maternal grandfather, Tabib, a rabbi well versed in Talmud and Kabbalah who was the spiritual leader of the community with whom he had immigrated from Yemen. Rabbi Tabib earned his livelihood by manual work,making gold and silver jewellery and filigree work. His first encounter with Western art occured at the Meir Shfeyah Youth Village at the age of 10. There he passed practically all of his adolescence, at first as a pupil, and later as an instructor and a trainee in raising sheep and cattle. In the late '20s the artist Arie Alweil (1901-1967) came to Shfeyah in the capacity of an educator. Alweil brought with him the high values of the Central European avantgarde, which he had absorbed during his years of study in Vienna. Okashi wrote the following about his first experiences of painting: "The school and the houses of the village, with the flora and the fauna around it, where for me actually my first encounter, a kind of baptism of fire, with everything to do with form and color. Indeed, from piles of cans and old planks that I found among heaps of junk, I created wall joints. Among trunks of tall pine trees in the famous Shfeyah pine grove, I built myself my first studio(...)". After a brief period in Tel Aviv (1933-1936), Okashi felt a powerful impulse and returned to confront nature, which in the past had served him as a laboratory and a reference source. The bustle of life in the city did not suit his temperament. Okashi found himself as a passerby, wanderer on the roads and decided to settle at Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar, in the magical landscapes of the Upper Galilee.There Okashi chose to work as a shepherd and met Joseph Zaritsky and Arie Aroch during their visits to the kibbutz. The few works that remain from this periode are those which survived a fire that destroyed eight huts in the kibbutz, Okashi's studio among them. In 1942 Okashi returned to the Meir Shfeyah Youth Village after a dispute which grew into a rift with members of the kibbutz because he had dared to pay with sheep for the canvasses he purchased. In Shfeyah, Okashi met Shlomit, a nurce by occupation, who became his wife. In 1944 the couple moved to Zichron Yaakov, and two years later their daughter Hamutal was borne.