PRESLER PRIVATE MUSEUM IS AN URBAN MUSEUM, WHICH IS LISTED AMONG THE LEADING ART AND CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS IN ISRAEL. IT IS OWNED BY MR. YIGAL PRESLER, WHO HAS BEEN COLLECTING AND STUDYING ART FOR OVER 20 YEARS.
PRESLER PRIVATE MUSEUM WAS OPENED IN 2013 IN SOUTH TEL-AVIV, IN A THREE-STOREY BUILDING THAT INCLUDES SEVERAL SHOWROOMS, A SEPARATE LIBRARY OF ART BOOKS AND AN EXPANSIVE ROOF OVERLOOKING THE CITY. THE MUSEUM MEETS THE STANDARDS OF A PRESTIGIOUS PUBLIC INSTITUTION IN TERMS OF DISPLAY MEANS, AND IT IS DESIGNED IN A CLASSIC EUROPEAN STYLE. THE MUSEUM AIMS TO RESEARCH, COLLECT, DISPLAY AND PRESERVE WORKS OF ART, BOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF ISRAEL. PRESLER PRIVATE MUSEUM IS MOTIVATED BY THE DESIRE TO DECONSTRUCT THINKING PATTERNS AND CLASSIFICATIONS WITH REGARD TO THE HISTORY OF ART, AND TO OFFER A NEW RANGE OF STORIES, ACCENTS AND TRENDS BY EXHIBITING ITS COLLECTIONS. THUS, A PART OF THE MUSEUM’S DOMAIN OF COMPETENCE INCLUDES DISCOVERING, EXPOSING AND PURCHASING OF THE WORKS IT EXHIBITS, IN ORDER TO INTEGRATE THEM IN THE ARTISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH DISPLAY AND DISCUSSION.
מוזיאון פרטי פרסלר
יוסף הלוי
THE MUSEUM HOLDS A RICH AND RARE COLLECTION OF EARLY 20TH CENTURY WORKS, WHICH ARE LOANED TO THE MOST PROMINENT EXHIBITION INSTITUTIONS
Josef Halevi
IN ISRAEL AND ABROAD. THE COLLECTION FOCUSES ON JEWISH AVANT-GARDE ART IN THE CLASSICAL TRADITION OF THE MODERN MOVEMENT, EXPLORING JEWISHNESS AS AN EMBODIMENT OF INTERNATIONALISM, AND CHARACTERIZED BY WHAT THE ROMANIAN PAINTER M.H. MAXY CALLED A “SPIRIT OF INVENTION,
"Secret verses"
ORGANIZING SYSTEM, SURPRISE, DISSOCIATION, ABSTRACTION… THE ACTUAL VIRTUES OF THE JEWISH PLASTIC ART MIND.”
27.8.2015 Shulamit Guretzki-Federman
Josef Halevi 1923-2009 Studied art at the Art Teachers College from 1953 to 1955. Solo exhibitions 1956, 1958
Chemerinsky Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1959
The Bat Yam Museum
1960, 1961
Dugit Gallery, Tel Aviv
1962
Katz Gallery, Tel Aviv
1963
Rina Gallery, Jerusalem
1964
Artists Association pavilion, Tel Aviv
1964
Museum of Modern Art, Haifa
1965
America-Israel Cultural Center, New York, USA
1966
Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
1967
Rina Gallery, Jerusalem
1969
Mabat Gallery, Tel Aviv
1971
Shocken Gallery, Tel Aviv
1971
Banking Center, Dusseldorf, Germany (FRG)
1976
ULM Gallery, Munich, Germany (FRG)
1983
Museum Fodor, Amsterdam, Netherlands
1983
Rosart Gallery, Amersfoort, Netherlands
1986
Mabat Gallery, Tel Aviv
1989
Petach Tikva Museum of Art
1990,1992,1996 De Schone Kunsten Gallery, Haarlem, Netherlands 2003
Edenfeuer Gallery, Cologne, Germany
2007
Meirov House of Art, Holon
2015
Pressler Private Museum, Tel Aviv
Group exhibitions 1957, 1971
Annual exhibition of Israeli artists
1965
Sao Paulo Art Biennial, Brazil
1966, 1969
Monaco Museum
1970, 1972
Autumn exhibition, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
1975, 1989
Annual exhibition of Amsterdam artists
1999
Annual exhibition of Israeli artists at the Pulchri Studio, The Hague, Netherlands.
Awards 1961
First prize at the "40 Years to the Histadrut Labor Federation� exhibition
1962
Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture, by the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Josef Halevi – “Secret verses” Fragments of words, syllables, cantillations and pictorial hieroglyphs are part of the works created by Joseph Halevy during his “Amsterdam Period,” to which an exhibition is dedicated at the Presler Museum. It was a period of 30 years (1974-2004) that the artist spent in the city of Rembrandt and Spinoza, in a busy studio packed with fabrics and paints, located in the Jordaan quarter. Born in the Yemenite neighborhood of Kerem HaTeimanim in Tel Aviv, Halevi, who received a religious education, became a gifted athlete and physical education teacher at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium. After meeting Arieh Allweil, fellow artist and teacher at the Gymnasium, Halevi was captured by the charms of paint, brush and canvas, and began to paint. After two years of studies at the Art Teachers College he declared: "I want to be a painter and nothing else.” His earlier works featured characters and animals on canvases saturated with color – a type of oil paint Halevi concocted himself. He painted scenes of biblical pilgrimages to Jerusalem during the Three Pilgrimage Festivals, and portrayed a variety of winged figures. As he said in an interview once: “I loved the winged characters that appear in sculptures and reliefs of Babylon and Assyria." Later on, these characters became calligraphic symbols and images the artist called “my statement”. During his frequent trips to Europe and the United States in the 1960’s, Halevi encountered the French “Arte Informale” movement, the action painting style of Jackson Pollock, the expressive canvases of Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell, the radiant “fields of color” on the works of Mark Rothko, as well as the painters belonging to the CoBrA avant-garde movement from Belgium and the Netherlands. Upon his arrival in Amsterdam in 1974, Halevi harnessed his brush for the benefit of intense colors and impulsive lines, creating passionate and sensual pictorial drama. Like strands of cloth in luxurious carpets of the ancient past, the artist let the paint flow to the bottom of the canvas. During breaks from painting Halevi visited the Rijksmuseum to enjoy his beloved work “The Milkmaid” by Johannes Vermeer. It is during his “exile” the artist chose to literally write the Bible on huge canvases; however a fire in his studio finished that chapter of his works. “One cannot use the Bible for personal needs,” he decided. With time, the secret calligraphy reappeared in Halevi’s works, translated into acrylic paint of blue-green and brown-ochre shades associated with him. “My colors are the colors of the desert” the artist confessed, as his soul was residing in the east, and his body – in the west. At the same time, his Amsterdam “Tablets of the Covenant” took shape – Halevi created single, double and even triple reliefs depicting cantillations, Hebrew words, fragments of words, syllables and letters – a “secular” permissible version of the Torah books, written on parchments and used in the synagogue. Works by Halevi, a rare colorist, who dipped his brush in the blue skies and the golden sands, are a dazzling fusion of abstract painting and his old passion for the ancient Eastern cultures. Halevi succeed in creating a personal mythology of his own: “I tried to find my own alphabet,” he said. His art combines the biomorphic organicity of works by Joan Miró, Paul Klee and Jean Arp, with qualities of the IsraeliCanaanite paintings. The works displayed in the exhibition showcase the cantillations and mark the way of “playing” the images similar to a music sheet. We, as viewers, should look for the font used to create these “secret verses.”