March 19 – April 27, 2025
The Collapse of the System, 1969
Rainbow, 1982
Breastplate (Choshen), 1975
Beggars, 1981 Berg Family Collection, Tel Aviv
Rocking Horses, 1974 Berg Family Collection, Tel Aviv
The Shell Digger, 1982 Michal and Guy Gildor Collection
Lot’s Wife, 1974
Couple in a Box, 1968 Yuval Family Collection, Tel Aviv
Profile of Doves, 1973
Pegasus, 1975
A Pilgrim with a Song of Songs Book, 1979
In Memory of Holocaust Victims, 1979
Jacob Gildor occupies a very special place in the world of Israeli art, particularly within the Surrealist movement and among the “Second Generation” of Holocaust survivor artists. His oeuvre reflects a profound engagement with personal and collective memory, interwoven with the fantastical elements that are typical of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.
Although he was born as Jacob Gildengorin in a so-called displaced persons camp in the vicinity of Munich Germany in 1948, after the end of World War II and the Holocaust, the theme of the Holocaust is central to his work. Gildor immigrated to Israel in 1949, and his upbringing in Tel Aviv and Holon was marked by the silent shadows of his parents’ Holocaust experiences. This unspoken past subtly permeated his artistic consciousness, fostering a deep-seated need to explore themes of memory and identity. As the art critic Batya Brutin has correctly pointed out in her article, Jacob Gildor is a leading representative of the “second generation” of artists, whose parents survived the Holocaust, and for whom this trauma has remained a bleeding, lifelong wound that largely determines their work. The life of Jacob Gildor serves as a vivid and instructive case study of the continuity of generations in Jewish and Israeli history. These days, one often hears that the last survivors of the Holocaust will soon pass away, and then there will be no one left to remember those horrors and to tell about them. Jacob Gildor, however, demonstrates that the memory of this unprecedented tragedy endured by our people need not be forgotten by the next generation; that children can remember and think about the nightmares which their parents experienced – even if the parents themselves, for one reason or another, did not speak about them.
Such was the case in the family where Jacob Gildor grew up. The artist himself testifies that neither his mother, Bela, who had been born in 1923, and survived the most terrible extermination camp of them all, Auschwitz-Birkenau, where her parents, sister, and grandparents perished; nor his father, Abraham, who was ten years older than his wife, and managed to escape into the interior of the Soviet Union, ever shared their experiences with either Jacob or their younger, Israeli-born son Michael. Jacob recalls that once, while still a child, he asked his parents why they had no relatives, and why no uncles, aunts, or grandparents ever came to visit them on holidays. All he heard in response was: “You shall find out when you grow up.” Only at a very mature age would Jacob Gildor learn that before the war, his father was married and had a child, but that both the wife and the son of Abraham Gildengorin (in the USSR, he was known as Arkady) were shot by the Nazis in Babi Yar. Even this information was not shared by his parents directly. The artist's wife and the mother of his three children, Hava, a history teacher, used to invite his parents, Bela and Abraham, to speak before her pupils. In this indirect way, as an adult, Jacob finally learned of his parents’ experiences.
After going through the worst horrors that the history of the human race has ever known, Abraham and Bella Gildor, arriving in Israel a few months after its declaration of independence, wished their children to grow up as free and mentally healthy people. As parents, they naturally wanted the best for their offspring – and, in their eyes, the best thing was to shield them from any knowledge of the Holocaust by simply not telling them anything. Jacob himself recalls the shock he received, already at the age of forty-five, during his visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) when it first opened its doors in 1993. That experience ushered in a fundamentally new stage in his artistic career; from that point on, his primary goal was to express the feeling of abiding tragedy and inconsolable grief. The style of his works changed dramatically: they became much more expressive, much less figuratively honed. The work of Gildor, as a member of the “Second Generation,” serves as a conduit for the traumas and memories inherited from Holocaust survivors. Unlike firsthand accounts, his art navigates the complex terrain of indirect experience, where imagination reconstructs fragmented histories. His compositions often juxtapose surreal landscapes with symbolic representations of loss and resilience, creating a dialogue between past and present. This approach not only preserves the memory of the Holocaust, but also examines its enduring impact on subsequent generations, contributing to a broader understanding of collective trauma in Israeli art.
By the time of that transformation, Jacob Gildor had already become a very well-known artist - and not only in Israel. Exactly a quarter century had passed since his first exhibition, held in 1968 at Bet Hachayal in Tel Aviv. He had taken up drawing in his adolescent years, or even earlier, and completed his first works using the monotype and etching techniques, despite being unfamiliar with these terms. He drew a lot at home, as well as at the café in Jaffa opened by his parents. Jacob dreamed of studying art, but his parents insisted that he obtain a profession that would guarantee his income. He applied to the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem and was accepted and placed in the second year. However, bowing to his parents’ desires, in 1965, at the age of seventeen, he became a law student at Tel Aviv University, from which he graduated in 1971. Those six years included not only his student days, but also his service in the Army as a paramedic in unit 669, with its mandate to rescue downed pilots, extract fighters beyond the front lines, and execute airborne medical evacuation from the battlefield.
In The Hand (private collection, Frankfurt), Gildor elaborates on the notions of war and peace, using the image of the dove in order to depict his personal experience. As a soldier in the Yom Kippur War, Gildor, who was a combat medic, found the amputated hand of an Egyptian soldier. This overtly traumatic experience resulted in this painting of a realistically depicted hand, which merges into the face of a dove. Neither the hand nor the dove can function normally, as they are both fragmented and flawed. The hand reaches out, as if crying for help, while the bird, with its hollow eye, is paralyzed and unable to move. And thus, these two elements suggest that a war will necessarily result in destruction. One should keep in mind that, even between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, especially in 1967–1970, Egypt and Israel were fighting each other in the War of Attrition, and the number of dead and wounded Israeli soldiers and officers was incomparably higher than what is happening on the Israeli-Egyptian border today, more than forty-five years after the conclusion of the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. In 1969, Jacob Gildor was discharged from the Army, intending to return to painting and, alongside this, resume his studies at the Faculty of Law. But life had a surprise in store for him: An exhibition of the masters of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism was opened at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and it impressed Jacob so much that his artistic style made a quantum leap.
A pivotal moment in Gildor’s artistic development occurred in 1972, when he was invited by Professor Ernst Fuchs (1930–2015), a leading figure of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, to study under his mentorship in Reichenau, Austria. It is hard to believe that Fuchs, an outstanding Austrian painter, accepted Gildor, a young man without a single art degree, for an internship. This apprenticeship gave Gildor a profound understanding of Fuchs’ unique tempera techniques and immersed him in the rich traditions of European Surrealism. The mentorship not only honed his technical skills, but also solidified his conceptual approach, which blends fantastical imagery with deeply personal narratives. In 1973, the great Salvador Dali hosted Jacob Gildor in Spain. It is quite difficult to imagine that through all those years, Jacob Gildor still worked as a lawyer in the “Ha’Sneh” insurance company. Only after his fortieth birthday, in 1988, did he decide to quit his day job and devote himself entirely to art.
Gildor’s association with the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism is evident in his meticulous attention to detail and the dreamlike quality of his imagery. The school’s emphasis on blending classical techniques with fantastical subject matter resonates throughout Gildor’s body of work. His paintings often feature intricate compositions where reality and fantasy converge, inviting viewers into a realm where the subconscious mind is given form. By incorporating elements of Jewish mysticism and personal symbolism, Gildor expands upon the school’s foundations, infusing his art with a unique cultural and existential dimension.
As analyzed by art critic and curator Ayelet Slutsky, in the painting Head-Reflection (1970), as well as in A Double-Sided Profile (1979), the artist combines different identities, as they blend together into one human face. In the first piece, the figures’ eyes are replaced with two different faces, which create a double confusion. On the one hand, they blind him, as they substitute for his eyes; on the other hand, they grant him two additional sets of eyes, and thus they do not limit his sight at all, but actually expand it. In the second piece, Gildor depicts a masculine human face, facing the viewer, while a feminine profile emerges from his right cheek. This painting reflects upon two major issues, doubling and gender, as the artist does not merely create a doubling of the human face, but also sows confusion as to its identity. Thus, it seems that, in these two pieces, Gildor attempts to show the self and the other at once, and this, in turn, results in a condition of ‘Sameness’ and ‘Otherness’ joined together.
Ayelet Slutsky adds that, in his paintings, Gildor, like other Surrealist artists, tries to place two contradictory states, dream and reality, into a sort of absolute actuality. He repeatedly places objects outside their usual environment and provokes in the viewer a sense of disorientation and a dissociation of sorts between the expected place of objects and their sudden, unexpected appearance elsewhere. Gildor combines a personal reality with an intense examination of the natural world. The iconographic representation of animals is an old and venerable tradition in art history. Still, Gildor turns these symbols to his advantage, using images from the life of beasts to reflect something of his own world. By incorporating animal symbolism into his paintings, he allows humans, fantastic creatures, and still-life objects to interrelate together quite naturally. And indeed, one seldom gets the feeling of unease or discomfort from his work – but rather a sense of total integration between the elements. In his hallucinatory, and at times fragmented, compositions and mysterious interiors, Gildor depicts the kind of fantasy that takes place between the real and the inexplicable, where transformation conjoins humans and the supernatural world. In his artworks, he combines highly diverse elements into one personal domain, which tells the story of his own unique realm.
Throughout his career, Gildor has showcased his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in Israel and internationally. In 2009, the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art hosted a large retrospective exhibition of Jacob Gildor’s art. A three-volume catalogue was released for this event, featuring reproductions of almost all the works created by this great artist. Curated by Meir Aharonson, this comprehensive showcase spanned four decades of Gildor’s artistic journey, highlighting his evolution and the consistent themes that permeate his work. It is very hard to believe that the artist who created all of these works is actually an autodidact, who has not received any systematic education in the field.
In addition to creating works of art in various techniques (paintings, drawings, etchings, mosaics, collages, etc.), Jacob also opened the ‘RIG’ gallery on Gordon St. in Tel Aviv, where the works of a number of important Israeli artists were exhibited. An invitation to Paris, the city of artists, for a year became a sign of his international recognition. His brother has long since moved to the USA; his son owns a gallery in London but lives in Israel, and Jacob Gildor himself has been an expert at MacDougall’s auction house in London for many years. Nevertheless, Goldor always returns to Israel from his trips abroad, and continues to live in his flat on the board between Tel Aviv and Jaffa, while creating new artworks at his studio in Holon, where he has been working for several decades now.
Along with Baruch Elron (1934–2006), Chairman of the Association of Painters and Sculptors in Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jacob Gildor was one of the undisputed leaders of the Surrealist school of Israeli art in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1980, these artists co-founded the “Meshushe” (Hexagon) group, aiming to introduce Surrealist art into the Israeli art scene, which was then predominantly focused on abstract and conceptual movements. This collective sought to challenge prevailing artistic norms, advocating for a more imaginative and introspective approach to art-making. Unfortunately, Israeli art criticism at that time was unacceptably dismissive of figurative painting; the presence of a literary plot in a particular work of art was perceived not as an essential advantage, but as a grave disadvantage. The most famous Israeli Surrealist artist, Samuel Bak, left Israel thirty-five years ago, and today there are museums dedicated to his work in Houston and Vilnius – but, alas, not in the Jewish State. Jacob Gildor remained committed to Surrealism for fourteen years, from 1969 to 1983, during which time he created several hundred impressive pieces. His work attracted quite a large following. For many years, these devotees could see his works at the “Israëls” gallery in Tel Aviv, and at the “Graphics 3” gallery in Haifa; regrettably, soaring real estate prices in Israel forced many galleries, which could not cope with the spikes in rent, to shut down.
Jacob Gildor’s first exhibition abroad was held in Sweden in 1974, and since then his works have been seen by audiences in various cities and countries, including Berlin in 1978 and 1979; Frankfurt in 1982 and 1985; Hamburg in 1987; Paris in 1987; Miami in 1994; London in 2007, 2009 and 2014, etc. However, at different times, the audiences were exposed to very different sides of Gildor the artist: Whereas the period from 1969 till 1983 was marked by Fantastic Realism and Surrealism, the next decade was a time of searching, during which the artist was alternately inspired by the Expressionist works of Franz Marc and Chaïm Soutine, and by the style of ‘New Objectivity’ that had emerged in Weimar Germany.
As mentioned above, 1993 saw the beginning of a new period in the artist’s career, when center stage was taken by his attempts to comprehend the experience of a person surviving a genocide. Jacob Gildor emphasizes the significance of the Holocaust as a phenomenon not only of national, but also of global history; it occupies a special place – yet, at the same time, it is one of many examples of mass destruction, from the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire to the murder of millions of innocent people in Maoist China and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Jacob Gildor is convinced that the task of the Jewish people is not only to preserve the memory of the tragedy it experienced in the 1940s, which claimed the lives of six million people, but also to warn humanity against attempts to resolve any internal or external conflicts through mass murder and extrajudicial executions. Obviously, the artist is neither a politician nor a judge, but the bitter experience of the past decades in Rwanda, Darfur, Bucha, Srebrenica, Sumgait, Khojaly, and the Osh region shows how those who should have prevented such atrocities, time after time turned out to be powerless – moreover, they actually condoned the pogroms, and even led them. Hence, the artist cannot guarantee the triumph of the values of tolerance and humanism – yet this is the message that Jacob Gildor, in his own words, seeks to convey to the visitors of his exhibitions, and to all those who see his work.
Gildor’s contributions have been recognized with several awards, including the America–Israel Cultural Foundation Prize in 1977 and the Israel Ministry of Education Prize in 1987, which granted him a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. These accolades reflect his influence and standing within the art community, both in Israel and abroad.
Jacob Gildor’s art serves as a bridge between the surreal and the real, the personal and the universal. His fusion of the Vienna School’s fantastical realism with the poignant legacy of the Holocaust creates a unique narrative that resonates with diverse audiences. Through his meticulous technique and profound thematic engagement, Gildor continues to enrich the Israeli artistic landscape, ensuring that the echoes of history are both heard and felt in the present. Taking all this into account, we decided to award Jacob Gildor the Moshe Castel Prize for an outstanding contribution to Israeli art, which was presented to him on December 4, 2024. At the same time, we began to prepare an exhibition of some of the best works of this unique artist, as well as its catalogue. Now that the exhibition is open and the catalogue has been published, we sincerely invite everyone to visit us at the Castel Museum in Ma’ale Adumim.
Dr. Alek D. Epstein,
Curator, The Moshe Castel Museum of Art in Ma’ale Adumim
