Israeli sculptor and experimental artist

Fire and Water Fountain, Tel Aviv 2015

Yaacov Agam (Hebrew: יעקב אגם) (born 11 May 1928) is an Israeli sculptor and experimental artist widely known for his contributions to optical and kinetic art.

Contents

• 1 Biography
• 2 Artistic career
• 3 See also
• 4 References
• 5 Bibliography
• 6 External links

Biography

Yaacov Gibstein (later Agam) was born in Israel, at the time Mandate Palestine. His father, Yehoshua Gibstein, was a rabbi and a kabbalist.

Agam trained at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, before moving to Zürich, Switzerland in 1949, where he studied under Johannes Itten (1888–1967) at the Kunstgewerbe Schule, and was also influenced by the painter and sculptor Max Bill (1908–1994).

In 1951 Agam moved to Paris, France, where he still lives. He has a daughter and two sons, one of whom is the photographer Ron Agam.

Artistic career

Agam's first solo exhibition was at the Galerie Craven, Paris, in 1953, and he exhibited three works at the 1954 Salon des Réalités Nouvellesand at the Le Mouvement exhibition at the Galerie Denise René, Paris, in 1955.

Agam's work is usually abstract, kinetic art, with movement, viewer participation and frequent use of light and sound. His works are placed in many public places. His best known pieces include Double Metamorphosis III (1965), Visual Music Orchestration (1989) and fountains at the La Défense district in Paris (1975) and the Fire and Water Fountain in the Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv (1986). He is also known for a type of print known as an Agamograph, which uses barrier-grid animation to present radically different images, depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The lenticular technique was executed in large scale in the 30:ft (9.1:m) square "Complex Vision" (1969) which adorns the facade of the Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.

Agam had a retrospective exhibition in Paris at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in 1972, and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1980, among others. His works are held in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

He is the subject of two do*entary films by American filmmaker Warren Forma: Possibilities of Agam (1967) and Agam and... (1980).

In 1996, he was awarded the Jan Amos Comenius Medal by UNESCO for the "Agam Method" for visual education of young children.

He designed and created the winner's trophy for the 1999 Eurovision Song Contest that was held in Jerusalem.

In 2009, at age 81, Agam created a monument for the World Games in Kaohsiung, Taiwan *led Peaceful Communication with the World. It consists of nine 10m high hexagon pillars positioned in diamond or square formation. The sides of the pillars are painted in different patterns and hues, totaling more than 180 shades. One side of each pillar is also lined to segment the structure into sections, so that children's perception of the pillar will change as they grow, because they will see a different pillar at a different height.

One of Agam's more notable creations is the Hanukkah Menorah at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in New York City, sponsored by the Lubavitch Youth Organization. The 32-foot-high, gold colored, 4,000 pound steel structure is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the World's Largest Hanukkah Menorah. It uses real oil lamps, which are lighted every year during Hanukkah with the aid of cherry-picking machines.

In May 2014, Agam's piece Faith- Visual Pray was presented to Pope Francis by El Al Israel Airlines' president, David Maimon. The piece included significant symbols of both Jewish and Christian faiths.

Agam is the highest-selling Israeli artist. In a Sotheby's New York auction in November 2009, when his 4 Themes Contrepoint was sold for $326,500, he said: "This does not amaze me … my prices will go up, in keeping with the history I made in the art world." A year later, his Growth, an outsize kinetic painting done in oil on a wood panel, which was shown at the 1980 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, estimated at $150,000 to $250,000, sold for the record-breaking sum of $698,000.

In 2018, the 3,200-square-meter Yaacov Agam Museum of Art (YAMA) opened in the artist's hometown of Rishon LeZion, Israel. Agam told the Jerusalem Post that it is "the only museum in the world that is dedicated to art in motion."

• Fountain in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv

• Work by Agam at the Sheba Medical Center, Israel

• Facade of Dan Hotel, Tel Aviv

• Eighteen Levels (1971)

• Lighting of World's Largest Menorah in New York City (2016)

See also

• Visual arts in Israel
• List of public art in Israel

References

Bibliography

• Ragon, Michel (1975). Agam: 54 mots cles pour une lecture polyphonique d'Agam (in French). Paris: Éditions Georges Fall. OCLC:2876738.
• Sayako Aragaki (2007). Agam. Beyond the Visible (3:ed.). Gefen Publishing House, Jerusalem/New York. ISBN:978-965-229-405-0.
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1980). Homage to Yaacov Agam. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum exhibition. Leon Amiel, New York. ISBN:978-0-8148-0751-4.
• Frank Popper (1968). Origins and Development of Kinetic Art. Studio Vista and New York Graphic Society.
• Frank Popper (1990). Yaacov Agam (3:ed.). H.N. Abrams, New York. ISBN:978-0-8109-1897-9.

External links

• Works by or about Yaacov Agam in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• "Yaacov Agam's Bio". Yaacov Agam's Fine Art. Archived from the original on 4 July 2007. Retrieved 28 December 2004.
• Park West Gallery Artist Profile: Yaacov Agam on YouTube
• Avraham Ronen (16 July 1998). "Agam Reconsidered". The Israel Review of Arts and Letters 1996/103. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs' website.
• Yaacov Agam collection at the Israel Museum. Retrieved September 2016.
• Yaacov Agam in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website