MOI VER: A FORGOTTEN GENIUS
Part of cluster exhibitions “Changing Prespective”
ABOUT MOÏ VER
Moï Ver (Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic) was born in 1904 in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he also studied painting. In 1927, visited the Bauhaus in Dessau to take courses with Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Joseph Albers, before he left for Paris to study at the Ecole de Photo Ciné. After several unrealised projects for photographic books, necessity led him to begin a career as a reporter. He immigrated to Palestine in 1934, and from 1950 he devoted himself to painting. He died in 1995.
“My grandfather on my mother’s side was a photographer and artist named Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic (who also worked under the pen name Moï Ver). He lived from 1904 to 1995. Born and raised in Vilna, now Vilnius in Lithuania, Moshé lived and worked in Paris before moving to Tel Aviv and eventually settling in Safed in northern Israel. In the late 1920s he studied at the famous Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, where his instructors included Paul Klée and Vassily Kandinsky. Moshe produced many paintings, especially in the later part of his career. As a young man, however, he was recognized primarily as a photographer, employing many innovative and creative techniques. Two major books of his photography were published. The first, “The Ghetto Lane in Vilna” (published in 1931) documented the everyday life of the city’s Jewish residents. In the same year, his second book, titled “Paris” was published by Jeanne Walter, with an introduction by Fernand Leger (it was republished in 2004 as “Ci-Contre – 110 Photos by Moï Ver,” by Ann and Jürgen Wilde, with commentary by Inka Graeve Ingelmann and Hannes Böhringer). An exhibition of these photographs was held in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in the winter of 2004/05
“CHANGING PRESPECTIVE”
THE EXHIBITION
At the height of 20th Century modernism and one of the followers of Moholy Nagy and his concept of New Vision, Moi Ver, alias Moshe Vorobeichic (1904-1995), was one of the shooting stars in European photography. As a contemporary of artists such as Man Ray, Ilse Bing, Hanna Höch, André Kertész, Brassaï, Germaine Krull or Dora Maar, who were all active in Paris at the same time and like many of them Moi Ver’s photographic vision was a combination of painting and camera practice that yielded radical images. Moi Ver’s work is a perfect example of the modernist movement of the early 20th century and reflects the social, cultural and artistic changes that were taking place at the time.
Born in Lithuania, 1904-1995
The present cluster of exhibitions seeks to view the issue of the relation to “place” in Israeli art. What is the effect of the presence of the artist here in Israel or his absence from it, on the representation of the “Israeli place”, of the “here and now? The artistic oeuvre presented in the exhibitions express the tension between an artistic practice that is activist and socio-politically oriented, and one that seeks the realms of dream and fantasy. It seems that the further away an artist is from the pit of the volcano, the more it sparks his interest, and the closer he is, the more urgent is his need to escape.
Read the full article on Israeli Art Market Issue#17
