Abed Abdi’s Art: 52 Years of Creation

Awards and honors:

• 1972: The Young Artist’s award at the Berlin International Youth Festival.

• 1973: The city of Haifa awarded Abdi the Hermann Struck Best Artist of the Year Prize in 1973.

• 1999: Hermann Struck Best Artist of the Year Prize, municipality of the city of Haifa (for a second time).

• 1999, 2001, 2002: A number of awards from local Rotary clubs in Haifa, Nazareth.

• 2008: Abed Abdi became the first Arab artist living in Israel to win the Israeli Minister of Science, Culture and Sport Award for art and graphic art.^[1]
   The Jury stated in their decision that “Abed Abdi’s Contribution in the making of collective visual culture among the Arab Israeli minority is unprecedented, and could be described as equivalent to Nahum Gutman‘s extent works.”^[2]
  Replying to a question from an interviewer regarding the excitement generated by the event in the Israeli media, Abdi said, “If I really am the first Arab artist, it is neither a compliment to me nor to 60 years of the State of Israel”.^[3^]
  Israeli curator Tal Ben Zvi commented that “Indeed, it seems that thus Abdi faithfully summed up the attitude of both the state and the Israeli art establishment towards Palestinian art inside the Green Line. Abdi, the prolific and groundbreaking artist in so many respects in the sphere of Palestinian art, was forced to wait until he was sixty-six to gain this recognition.”^[]

• 2008: Abdi received a honorary mention from the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures for for his activities in fostering Euro Mediterranean dialogue through the arts, having been selected as one of the 5 finalists^[5]in the Euro-Med Award for the Dialogue between Cultures for 2008.

• In 2010, the mayor of the city of Haifa awarded him the title of notable citizen of Haifa .^[6]

Notes:

1.  see the official catalog of the winners, Ein Harod Museum of Art, at p.22-23
   
2.  http://www.ynet.co.il/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3636366,00.html
   
3. Anat Zohar, “It Doesn’t Compliment Me or the State”, at http://bidur.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=600807
   
4.  Tal Ben Zvi, Abed Abdi: Wa Ma Nasina (We Have Not Forgotten) in: Abed Abdi: 50 Years of Creativity, published in 2010, at p. 199.
5.  http://www.euromedalex.org/euromed-award/previous-editions
   
6.  link to Haifa municipality’s announcement