Pinchas Litvinovsky

Pinchas Litvinovsky (1894-1985) was born in 1894 in Novo-Georgiyevsk, Russia. He studied at the Academy of Art in Odessa. In 1919 he immigrated to Israel. In the 1930’s he traveled to Paris several times where he encountered the art of Matisse, Picasso and artists of the Jewish School of Paris. Litvinovsky was a strikingly physical, athletic type, an amateur boxer, a long-distance runner. He was a painter of the erotic and sensual for whom the canvas became a “lovers’ palette”. Under his brush the world became one of color and form. Women, men, children and animals were transferred into bright splashes of color and surprising, energetic forms.
Litvinovsky’s images were drawn from his inner world with no attempt to depict a realistic environment or any defined space. His figures were formal and flat motives painted as concepts across a neutral, abstract background. Litvinovsky made a dramatic use of modernist styles, especially Cubism as reflected in the Russian painting of the 1920’s along with usage of bright colors, reminiscent of Matisse.