Reuven Rubin: Be my Guest

Born in 1893 in Galați, Romania, Reuven Zelicovici arrived in Jerusalem as a young man, not yet twenty, to study at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts. A year later, he left for Paris, then the capital of modern art. In 1922, at the conclusion of a winding journey of artistic growth that passed through Paris, Romania, and New York, he returned to Mandatory Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv. To a large extent, Rubin was the formulator of local art in the 1920s and the creator of some of the most iconic and memorable images of young Tel Aviv. In the 1930s, his style shifted: his canvases grew darker, more mottled and dreamy, and his imagery tended toward the Jewish-Biblical. Rubin remained a prolific artist throughout his life, and in 1974, the year of his death, was awarded the Israel Prize. He bequeathed his house and dozens of his works to the city, to found a museum for the benefit of its residents. The name “Reuven Rubin” emerged from his bilingual signature: “Reuven” in Hebrew and “Rubin” in English.

Rubin's early paintings are brightly-colored, marked by simple forms. He portrayed the land and its vistas—Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ein Kerem, the Sea of Galilee—as a pastoral realm where Jews and Arabs, pioneers and shepherds, farmers and peddlers, poets and artists, the devout members of the old Yishuv, Yemenites, Bukharans, and new immigrants coexist in harmony. The story of the place, as it emerges from Rubin’s canvases, is a dream of mythical unity, the source of his work’s enduring appeal as well as the reason for later critique.

Rubin was a modern painter, yet he never turned to abstraction. Hayim Nahman Bialik, Rubin’s neighbor, wrote in a 1927 article in Haaretz: “…it is almost as if a house of study was built there: ‘Made by Rubin,’ ‘Rubin-like,’ ‘almost Rubin.’ There are already ‘Rubins’—soon ‘non-Rubins’ will come." Alongside Rubin, the exhibition presents several “non-Rubins”—Israeli artists who followed him, some of whom were active during his later years: Arie Aroch, Joshua (Shuki) Borkovsky, Moshe Gershuni, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Hagit Lalo, Raffi Lavie, and Moshe Mokady.

Hospitality offers a perspective on the delicate relationship between host and guest. This pairing may seem to frame figuration and abstraction as opposing poles, but their juxtaposition on the gallery walls reveals shared formal qualities and structural kinship. Hospitality in this context is envisioned as a response to the most essential and urgent imperative of our time—a call for sensitivity and profound responsibility toward the Other.