Yaacov Agam is one of the pioneer creators of the kinetic movement in art as well as its most outstanding contemporary representative. Agam was born in 1928 a son of a Rabbi of Rishon LeZion (Israel), who devoted his life to the study of Jewish religious matters and wrote books. Agam considers himself somehow as a visual continuation of his father’s quest for spirituality. Agam studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, and in Switzerland at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule and the Zurich University. After arriving to Paris in 1951, Agam held his first one man exhibition with a great success in 1953 This exhibition consisted totally of kinetic, movable and transformable paintings, which actually was the first one-man show in art history exclusively devoted to kinetic art.
A passionate experimenter, Agam deals with such problems as the 4th dimension, simultaneity and time in the visual, plastic arts, and has extended his experiments to application in the fields of literature, music and art theory.
Among the awards Agam has received are a special prize for art research at the Sao Paulo Bienal in 1963 and first prize at the International Festival of Painting at Cagnes-surmer in 1970. Agam has had exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Museum, the Musee National d’Art Moderne in Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Agam’s work is in the collections of many museums, including the Guggenheim in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Joseph Hirshhorn Collection in Washington, D.C. He lives and works in Paris today.
This exhibit will feature a retrospective of his kinetic works as well as new pieces. Agam will be available to meet and discuss his work at the opening reception on Thursday, January 28, 2016 at 5:30 pm. The exhibit runs through April 21 and will be open during normal museum hours.
Sponsored by The Park West Foundation. Thank you to additional contributors who made this exhibit possible: The Consulate General of Israel, Annette Corman, Stuart Gleichenhaus, Alex Hammerman, and Whole Foods Market.
