Arie Aroch

The canvas is unlined and in good condition apart from surface warping (extensively painted on the reverse). The surface is in very good condition apart from surface dirt and paint rubbing on extreme edges, visible in current framing. Left and bottom margin rubbed from the stretcher. Craquelure throughout, mostly evident in the sky. No signs of retouching when viewed under ultra violet light.
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Aroch, born in Kharkov, Russia, emigrated to Israel in 1924, where he studied at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. In 1948, he was among the founding members of New Horizons, Israel's primary movement in abstract art.

In the early 1940s, while serving in the British Army, Aroch devoted much of his free time to painting landscapes. In this work, the landscape serves as a setting for a May 1^st workers procession. The marchers, bodies expressionistically blocked in with bold colors, cut into the bottom of the painting, passing by a small, hillside town, waving a red flag, their path marked out before them in a ribbon of road leading through the distant hills. Aroch made great efforts in his landscape paintings from the period to reconcile his feelings of anguish over the war and his feelings of hope for the land and people of Eretz Israel. The landscapes from the early 1940s often show figures alone, isolated in the scenery, or disconnected from one another. This work, however, is a documentation of defiance and strength of the people of Eretz Israel, marching together with common purpose. It is as though Aroch overcomes his fears for the people of Eretz Israel and the reality of the fragility of their position in the world, by illustrating them in a united, international cause. In Aroch's words, "At times it's difficult to get accustomed to the idea that the handful of people here, with all their human weaknesses, can bear within itself a redemption for such great troubles." (Arie Aroch, catalogue for an exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum, 2003, p. 52)