Mordecai Ardon

Collection of Dr. Michael Ardon
Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Tel Aviv Museum, Ardon: A Retrospective, May - October, 1985, no. 69
Israel Museum, To the East - Orientalism in the Arts in Israel, Summer 1998, Jerusalem, illustrated in the catalogue 
Israel Museum, Mordecai Ardon - Landscapes of Infinity, February - August, 2003, Jerusalem

Michele Vishny, Mordecai Ardon, New York, 1974, plate 121 (illustrated), no. 171, pg. 229
Ronald Furher, Israeli Painting: From Post-Impressionism to Post-Zionism, New York, 1998, pg. 161, illustrated
Arturo Schwarz, Mordecai Ardon: The Colors of Time, Jerusalem, 2003, no. 45, detail illustrated on the cover

Canvas is not lined. SURFACE: In very good condition, colors are vibrant and fresh. UNDER UV: No apparent inpainting.
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Ardon’s Venus of Beersheba is an iconic work which exemplifies many of the artist’s profound achievements. Signifying its pre-eminence in Ardon’s oeuvre, this painting was chosen as front and back cover of the catalogue Mordecai Ardon: The Colors of Time, which accompanied the parallel Ardon exhibitions which were held at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2003.

 

Ardon is celebrated as an artist who mastered the portrayal of light. Vishny notes that Ardon was fond of quoting a Chassidic saying: ‘”In everything there is light – sparks of hidden light, which he, the Chassid, has to free and unite with the heavenly light – the spiritual light’” (Michelle Vishny, Mordecai Ardon, New York, 1974,  p. 39). In this work and in other evening or dusk views, Ardon confronted the task of capturing the nocturnal atmosphere and impregnating it with metaphysical and mystical meaning. “Ardon gives pictorial form to dawn and twilight, to the nocturnal, shadowy and lunar. Through his use of colour and abstract forms he suggests a higher, more mysterious order of nature than the eye perceives. It is the image of the sky which concerns him… the feeling of a clear night, a vast cosmic creation, which is evoked by the pictorial construction itself” (Avram Kampf, Chagall to Kitaj, Jewish Experience in 20th Century Art, London, 1990, p. 154).

The influence of Sumerian sculpture is clearly evident in Ardon’s work of the early 1960's.  Ardon was fascinated by ancient civilizations, which he felt must have experienced a closeness to nature that had been lost to subsequent generations. The genesis of the painting evolved from the discovery of  archeological finds in the area of Beersheba: “The features of the deity seen in Venus of Beersheba, 1962, were inspired by an ivory statuette of the Chalocolithic period (4500-3500 BCE), unearthed as the title indicates, in Beersheba. At the same site, the bird figurine seen in the painting was also found . . . The sky above our small Venus is quite mysterious. Its watery profundity is illuminated by two radiating stars, and by a few green and red square bodies . . . At the bottom, four birds are gazing at the dormant, headless Venus. It would have been difficult to choose a more appropriate animal to guard the deity. Birds are almost universally considered as symbolic of the soul and are deemed to be the expression of the power of life.  According to Jung, birds often represent angels who grant supernatural aid as well as being symbols of thought and flight of imagination. Finally, night birds, like those here, represent the positive powers of the Feminine principle” (Arturo Schwarz, Mordecai Ardon: The Colors of Time, Jerusalem, 2003, p. 55).