Lev Syrkin – I Have Set My Rainbow
“I have been living in Israel since 1972. In Moscow, I had everything, except the main thing – a state of my own and the right to speak my ancient language, the language of the Bible, the right to dedicate my art to my country and my people, to its history, religion, and tradition.”
Lev Syrkin, June 2004
Lev Syrkin (1929-2012) was born in Moscow and raised in a Jewish traditional and Zionist home. He had studied at the Stroganoff Academy for Monumental Art in Moscow, and was a committee member of Moscow’s Artists Union. Syrkin had worked in his country of birth both individually and as part of a group specializing in monumental wall art, creating, among other, the approx. 2,000 m² mosaic October at the center of Moscow and the Circle of Life 12 m² fountain in the Crimean Peninsula, for which he was nominated for the Lenin Prize. Having paid the “ransom tax” and leaving behind a secure livelihood, professional recognition, and established artistic reputation, Syrkin immigrated to Israel in 1972 and settled in Jerusalem. Thus, he realized his dream to turn a new leaf as a Jewish artist in Israel.
During his forty years here, he created a large body of works, including drawings, paintings, and wall art. Most of his oeuvre in Israel was dedicated to monumental mosaic art that was ideologically situated in public spaces: the artist declared, time and again, that he wished to give and bequeath to his much beloved people and country another cultural layer.
Even though Syrkin was an excellent, highly awarded multi-disciplinary artist, much-acclaimed both in Israel and abroad, and despite his prolific artistic output – he made more than 25 large wall works for public spaces throughout Israel – he is virtually unknown here and is denied his due recognition by the public and the art establishment.
His numerous works and their undeniable cultural import do suggest that it is high time to have at least some of them displayed, to discuss their cultural contribution, and to introduce him to the discourse of mainstream Israeli art.
The exhibition’s title, “I Have Set my Rainbow,” is borrowed from the Book of Genesis and represents both Syrkin’s covenant with Israel and the Israelis and the meteorological phenomenon which served him as a source of inspiration and became a central and meaningful motif in his work.
The exhibition is comprised of drawings and paintings as well as wall works shown, for the first time, in museal display space in an attempt to raise the recognition of public wall art, its value and the importance of preserving it. In this sense, the exhibition should be seen as an “appetizer,” or an invitation to go outdoors into the public space and re-encounter Syrkin’s colorful art and ideas in situ and experience the great love with which he created them for us.
Dina Grossman, Exhibition Curator