Issue No. 5 of Al-Jadeed Magazine, May 1991
When you meet the artist Abed Abdi and talk with him about his life and artistic activities, you feel as if you are meeting a long and vibrant history of artistic engagement—one that Abdi has been able to convey to us through the events and changes occurring on the ground. He expresses these through a fabric of lines, symbols, signs, and colors that form complete paintings—a testimony to the suffering of the Arab person in the homeland, and a sincere, revolutionary witness to the acts of demolition, repression, and fragmentation they face.
In front of this forty-year-long history—Abdi’s artistic life, which began when he was just eight years old (Abed Abdi was born in Haifa in 1942)—it is essential to follow the development of this artist, who laid the foundations for the visual arts movement in the homeland, and to explore his rich and multifaceted life.
Q: Do Arab painters receive material and moral support from institutions in a way that ensures continuity and development of their work?
There are two interconnected factors at play: first, the lack of support from governmental institutions in this field, and second, the almost total absence of awareness among grassroots institutions. These institutions view artistic activities merely as decorative elements for musical festivals and grand speeches under the eye of the video camera.
However, due to the persistent demands of artists, there are now efforts to elevate the status of Arab artists in Israel.
Q: Is it possible to make a living from painting?
If the artist has additional work in related or adjacent fields, it helps apply mental practices and expands the teacher-artist’s horizons in theoretical application, thus developing the possibilities for the material produced. Relevant fields include graphic design, set design, book cover design, and even sign-making, Arabic calligraphy, or—further afield—manual trades like blacksmithing or carpentry. This often reduces artistic practice to a secondary occupation pursued only on weekends.
Q: You were and still are a painting teacher. Do you see a new generation of artists worth mentioning?
In the 1980s, interest in art began to grow among our Arab community, especially among youth eager to pursue the profession. Their numbers may still be relatively small, but proportionally they exceed those of the 1970s. Today, art colleges and teacher training institutions are seeing good attendance from Arab youth. For example, in 1988, a group of qualified students graduated in fine arts from the Arab Teachers’ College in Haifa. Additionally, a significant number of Arab students are enrolled at Bezalel Academy, Oranim, Tel Hai, and abroad—such as Osama Said in Germany and Bashir Makhoul in London.
The main problem these graduates face is the lack of opportunities to work in the field.
Q: What employment opportunities exist for art graduates?
There are indeed opportunities, but two main obstacles stand in the way. First, the lack of staffing positions at the Ministry of Education, and second, the absence of awareness among Arab institutions regarding the importance and vitality of the arts in public life. For example, a school principal might prioritize all subjects except art, placing it at the bottom of the list.
However, it’s difficult to deny that both sides are now showing a desire to develop this field.
Q: Arab artists don’t yet have an association representing and supporting them. Why is that? Are there efforts to create such a framework?
I joined the Association of Israeli Visual Artists in 1962 (I was the first Arab member). After the graduation of the first and second cohorts of talented Arab students, totaling about 20 artists, who also joined the Association, I still feel that this is not enough. There is now a desire to organize Arab artists into a unified body that can lobby the Ministry of Education to recognize them within a dedicated framework that would provide them with support—just as is done for Jewish artists.
Q: What is the situation for Jewish artists?
Government institutions provide financial support to Jewish artists through grants that allow them to dedicate time to their work. The Ministry of Education also supports cultural clubs and comprehensive art education in schools in Haifa and Tel Aviv. It funds exhibitions and museums and facilitates the acquisition of artists’ work—none of which exists in the Arab sector.
There are, however, positive signs from the Ministry of Education, including a willingness to listen to the problems I’ve mentioned, and an intention to find solutions. We hope these intentions become reality.
Q: How are these signs being felt?
We submitted a list of practicing Arab artists (about 30 in total) along with a memorandum of demands to Mr. Mowaffaq Khoury, the head of the Arab Cultural Department at the Ministry of Education. Based on that memorandum, we held a meeting with him last month and formed a small committee of artists and art teachers to study the demands and work to implement them. Some demands include organizing exhibitions in various regions of the country—with a dedicated budget—and establishing an annual national exhibition that offers one or two grants as merit awards, with the goal of eventually turning this into a tradition and increasing the number of full-time artist grants.
Art critic Haim Maor writes about Abed Abdi:
Abdi says: “One of the most unforgettable scenes from my early childhood—and one that formed the foundation of my artistic work—was seeing my father lying on the floor of our home in the Lower City of Haifa, begging: ‘Let us stay!’ It was 1948. But his pleas were in vain. We were forced, when I was six years old, to flee to Lebanon, then Syria, with my mother and family. After two and a half years of displacement, we returned to Haifa to a new political and family reality.
The various feelings that stirred in the heart of young Abdi have since seeped—and still seep—into his paintings and prints.
In the 1950s, his artistic culture developed and merged with his political-party consciousness. Abdi recalls: “The first studio I studied in was run by Avraham Yaskil,” through whom he met his teacher and painter Yehoshua Grossbard and other Jewish artists. In their libraries, he was first introduced to the works of Mexican artists like David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, and German artists like Käthe Kollwitz. This exposure motivated him to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, East Germany, in 1965.
Art critic Haim Maor notes: “At that time, socialist realism was at its peak. The young student immersed himself in gaining technical mastery in drawing, graphic arts, printmaking, mural painting, and environmental sculpture. He was influenced by his teachers as well as German artists who used both experimental and social realism. Encounters with Gothic and German Renaissance, and the German Expressionist movements Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, also left a deep impression on him. It was there that Abdi felt his artistic consciousness crystallize.”
Modern German cultural renaissance awakened conflicting desires in Abdi. He says: “I longed for Arab and Islamic heritage. I realized I belonged to the Palestinian people and the Middle East—not to European civilization.”
In 1972, Abdi returned to Israel with a BA in Fine Arts from Dresden. He began working as an illustrator for books and covers, contributing art to Arabic newspapers like Al-Ittihad, Al-Jadeed, and Al-Ghad. He later became an art teacher in Kafr Yasif and then at the Arab Teacher Training College in Haifa.
The events he depicted in his art, his teaching, and the murals he painted on school buildings and public spaces in Arab villages attracted a circle of young painters. These artists began exhibiting in Arab towns and later at Beit HaGefen in Haifa.
Abdi also collaborated with Jewish artists such as Moshe Gat, Ruth Schloss, Gershon Knispel, and Shimon Tzabar. Alongside the growing artistic awareness in the Arab community, Abdi underwent a personal artistic evolution—gradually shifting from figurative and expressionist painting to symbolic abstraction.
Abdi explains: “I went through a process of symbolic and poetic integration. In my new works, the number of raised hands and tormented facial expressions has diminished. Instead, I use form and material as tools to express these ideas. I now place more weight on pure artistic elements by assembling and completing components from the past.”
Today, viewers of Abdi’s paintings will see scenes from nature and the garden surrounding his Haifa studio. He observes tree branches, crumbling rocks, metal scraps, and window bars—finding in their textures and forces of nature a human presence. He explains:
“When I contemplate stone, I discover it has a soul and shape that resembles the wrinkled face of an old man.”
Art critic Haim Maor writes: “A review of Abdi’s body of work shows a search for the unity of opposites. He links this with his daily routine: ‘My walk from Wadi Nisnas, where I live, to my studio in Hadar HaCarmel is, for example, a transition from one civilization to another.’”
After this rich conversation that answered many of our questions and clarified issues previously unknown to us, we must note that artist Abed Abdi will hold the second exhibition of his paintings at Beit HaGefen on Saturday, May 25, 1991. His first exhibition, titled “The Silence of the Sea,” was held in Tel Aviv the previous year.
In this new exhibition, Abdi presents a renewed yet familiar style. His themes center on the environment and social context—portraying human figures, iron fragments, and torn nylon sheets. The color gradients in his work move from dark black to gray to white, replacing black spaces with deep and light blues.
The silence that previously marked his work begins to dissolve. His latest works—created since the start of this year—are filled with tension and emotion, reflecting the aftermath of the Gulf War. The remnants of war—plastic shreds and scattered fragments—appear on old house windows, like ghostly testimonies from centuries past.
Clearly, the pieces in this exhibition represent a new qualitative stage in the path of artist Abed Abdi, beginning from his first exhibition in 1972 after returning from Germany.
—Samih Sabbagh
May 23, 1991
