LE DELUGE (THE FLOOD – titled in French) by GABRIEL COHEN
French-Israeli, born 1933
signed, oil on canvas,
24.75″ x 17.5″
Born in Paris to Sephardi-Jerusalemite parents, the father was a tailor who also studied Kabbalah, the mother, a seamstress. Having lived through the German occupation of Paris, the family emigrated to Israel in 1949. Gabriel the 6th of 11 children earned money from odd jobs. He began to paint at 40, while working as a diamond cutter and night watchman. His work is suave, sophisticated and powerfully naive. He mixes reality with dreams, eat with West,light and shade, playfulness and violence, grandeur and humour. He has held one man shows all over the world in museums in Europe, US(Jewish Museum NY), Canada, and Israel. His woks have sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s Int’l,
Literature: O.BIhalji-Merin, World Encyclopaedia of Naive Art, Harper & Row, Scranton, PA, 1985