Oded Netivi

Oded Netivi in ​​his studio

Oded Netivi (born September 27, 1950 in Haifa , Israel ) is a German-Israeli painter and writer. He lives and works in Heidelberg , Germany and in Languedoc in the south of France . He is married and has two children.

Life

Parental home and childhood

Necitis belongs to the "second generation" after the Shoah . He was born in Haifa in 1950 as the son of a German-Jewish couple (mother Hannah and father Eliezer, both Holocaust survivors). His father hebraized the original family name "Weglein" (little way) immediately after the birth of the first and only child to "Netivi" (my way). He experienced both the pioneering spirit of the new Israeli society and the armed conflict with the Arab neighbors.

In 1967 he suffered various injuries from an explosive explosion, including a. the loss of an eye.

School time and training

After graduating from a humanistic grammar school in 1968, he spent some time as an aspiring farmer (cotton and fish farming) in a kibbutz in the north of the country. In 1969 he left Israel, originally only with the intention of learning film directing (so to speak, as a "continuation" of his father's training as a theater director, which he had to break off prematurely due to National Socialist persecution) and began an internship at Südwestfunk-Fernsehen in Baden-Baden.

A return to Israel was planned for 1971, but the influences of the 1968 movement drew Oded Netivi to Heidelberg. There he matriculated a. a. to study psychology and sociology. After completing his studies in 1975, he worked as a social worker near Frankfurt am Main, in the hot spot of the drug scene at the time.

Beginnings in art

From 1976, however, he was increasingly drawn to the visual arts. He became more and more aware that painting was an expressive medium for him to implement and perhaps make understandable for himself what moved him.

At the same time as his decision to give up work in the social field and to devote himself entirely to artistic creation, Netivi broke all civic conventions in 1976. He moved into a listed old building in Heidelberg's old town to set up his studio on the three floors of the building. The building owners, the Goos-Schaaf families, developed into sponsors and patrons of the aspiring artist.

Artistic creation

Netivi's paintings should be reflections of his personal experiences and feelings in the field of tension between cultures and religions. The focus is on characters, people with their stories, their suffering, their fragility and their pursuit of personal fulfillment. His examination of the techniques of the old masters (oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, etc.) was followed by works in etching and lithography . Later he created illustrations, stage designs and sculptures. In addition to painting, Oded Netivi also repeatedly occupied himself with the art of writing. Countless poems, various short stories, manuscripts and a novel were written.

Visual arts

Even in his early school days, Oded Netivi illustrated a wide variety of year books and school newspapers or decorated the rooms for class celebrations with self-painted posters. However, the decision to become a professional artist came spontaneously in 1976, after meeting the painter and filmmaker Gregor Scheer (1949–2008) in his studio. This was followed by a phase of artistic creation in the style of surrealism, in which he named his older Jewish colleague Samuel Bak as a model. During this time hundreds of paintings in oil, tempera mixed media and thousands of drawings in different techniques, watercolors, lithographs and etchings were created. From 1981 a style developed from the surrealist beginnings that can be attributed to the Fantastic Realism of Ernst Fuchs, for example. Under the influence of German dance theater, Netivi's way of working developed in a new direction from 1985 to 86. A path that he has followed up to the present (2008). Even if surreal or fantastic stylistic elements are still present in his paintings, works are now being created that are supposed to be reminiscent of frozen snapshots of a stage appearance or a film sequence (e.g. dancers who represent or symbolize characters and feelings in pantomime fashion solely through body gestures capital). The basic idea: recorded with a fast, sketchy pen in photo-realistic diction, shining through the finest resin oil glazes, colored like watercolors.

technology

Paintings are the main focus of the painter's oeuvre . His work is characterized by a balanced arc of tension between a graphic-modern conception and an implementation in the style of the old masters: A (charcoal) preliminary drawing with an impulsive, expressive line is followed by the image structure in the painting technique of old masters, such as those by Hubert and Jan van Eyck , 14th century, through Peter Paul Rubens 16th century, up to Ernst Fuchs in the 20th century.
The vitality of the preliminary drawing made in charcoal and pencil is reminiscent of the laconic rigor of modern journalistic photography. In fact, Netivi sometimes uses his own camera as an aid, memory aid and inspiration. Occasionally, however, foreign photographs find their way into his image design in the sense of an " objet trouvé ".

The originals created in this way are alienated, combined in the sense of collages and partially supplemented by traditional drawing techniques. In contrast to these modern influences and contemporary technical aids, his very own style of painting is based on the old masters' art of icon and panel painting. His painting grounds consist of textile picture carriers such as canvas or cotton cloth, which are stretched onto wooden panels. After the preliminary drawing, Netivi applies an underpainting, the “ imprimitur ”, which consists of water-soluble glue, gouache or tempera . This creates a unique liveliness of the color effect, which also helps quiet parts of the picture to achieve great spatial depth and artistic elasticity. The next thing is the actual composition of the picture, in which the interactions of brightly clear resin-oil glazes with modeled egg-tempera underpaintings merge into one unit. In this way, in a complex and elaborate work, but ultimately in rapid succession, his color-intensive and luminous paintings from within.

Themes and interpretation

The spectrum of his topics is broad, but for Netivi, the focus remains primarily on the figurative, i.e. the people. The art critic R. Schalecheth believes that Netivi sees "a modern poem whose words are replaced by pigments" in every painting. The director and art historian of the Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg, Klaus Mugdan (1913–2003) saw in the more recent work by Oded Netivi “the link, the bridge between the old and the new media, between traditional painting and modern, reproducible image carriers such as photos and films up to digital recording ”. Lively exhibitions at home and abroad (mostly galleries and museums in Israel, Germany and France) help to spread Netivi's name more and more.

Penmanship

In addition to the fine arts, Oded Netivi was always active as a writer. In 2008 he completed the extensive manuscript for his first novel entitled “God is not an excuse”, which was published in 2011 by Melzer Verlag under the title “God is guilty” . In 2011 the same publisher published a booklet “Der Bassgeiger” by Isaak Leib Perez, illustrated by Netivi. In May 2011 he completed the manuscript for his novel "Jumping man"

He also wrote a variety of poems, dozens of articles, short stories and speeches, some of which were published in various magazines or journals. On the occasion of the opening of exhibitions by his artist colleagues, he took over the “vernissage speech”. The short story for children and young people "Jonathan, a dance fairy tale" was published by Majewski Verlag in Bruchsal. The texts and poems for the dozen of reproductions of his etchings in the illustrated book “Clowns, Narren und other Künstler”, Schimper Verlag, Schwetzingen, also come from his pen. Various art and culture magazines devoted cover stories to him. For example “Artprofil” Febr. 2001, “Passagen” Apr. 1990 or “Offset” 1982.

Others

Netivi's complete works meanwhile include many thousands of works in all common techniques. There are drafts and designs of theater sets, as well as book illustrations and posters. In addition, so-called "hanging sculptures" (showcases suitable for hanging, reliefs and sculptures in light construction) were also regularly created .

Web links

Commons : Oded Netivi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Oded Netivi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage
• Oded Netivi on beepworld.de

swell

• Various interviews with the artist Oded Netivi in ​​2007 and 2008
• Interview with Amiram Katwan 2007, a childhood friend of the artist from Haifa Israel.
• Interview with the gallery owner Piotrowski Eckhard (13 joint exhibitions)
• Unplanned life - Oded Netivi , student newspaper ruprecht , December 8, 1995
• Cover story in the magazine for literature and art "Passagen" 1990
• Cover story in the magazine for literature and art "Artprofil" (PDF file; 143 kB)
• Texts from Netivis website