Marik Lechner

born 1967, Ukraine

Portrait of a Woman in Headkerchief, 2008

Original Hand-Signed Watercolor -

Dated 2008

Artist Name: Marik Lechner

Title: Portrait of a woman in headkerchief

Signature Description: Hand-signed in Hebrew, dated "2008" and dedicated on verso

Technique: Watercolor on paper

Size: 32 x 24 cm / 12.6" x 9.45" inch

Frame: Unframed, the painting comes complete with canvas stretcher but without a frame. 

Condition: Very Good condition.

Artist's Biography:

Marik Lechner was born in 1967 in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973. Lechner graduated from HaMidrasha School of Arts in 2001. He has had solo shows at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv, and Feinkunst Krüger Gallery, Hamburg among others and has participated in group exhibitions in Germany, Latvia and Israel.
Lechner has won several awards, among them Israel’s National Lottery Prize for Culture and Art and Lauren & Mitchell Presser Contemporary Art Grant.

Education
1996 Western Galilee College of Art
1998 - 2001 HaMidrasha - Faculty of the Arts, Beit Berl College, Kfar Saba
2004 – 2010 Lived and worked in Hamburg, Germany

"Marik Lechner's paintings are colorful, wild, and explosive. His paintings give the sense of an anarchist attack on the canvas, on the colors, on the narrative image, walking the thin line between the banal and the wild, the traditional and the unconstrained, a weird painting, free, stimulating and enticing."
Ruth Direktor, art critic and curator of contemporary art

"Nature is a central theme in Lechner's work. Yet unlike 18th and 19th century Romantic painters, who attempted to express their personal impressions of nature rather than to transform it, Lechner is intent upon controlling nature. He does not feel he is at nature's mercy; rather, he subverts and distorts it while glorifying both its beauty and its cruelty."
Varda Steinlauf, art curator

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

My first recollection of making art is when I made a woodcut of a deer during a handicraft lesson at school, when I was around ten years old. I still remember the strangeness of it, as if my hands were out of my control, working on their own. When I saw the finished work, I was so surprised and proud; it was pure joy. After that, I just wanted to recreate that experience as often as I could and to this day I still feel the same strangeness while I work, as if someone else takes the lead.  

We were an immigrant family, living in a small apartment in a beach town in Israel, very close to the Lebanon border. My parents were focused on survival: money and practicalities were the big issues, and cultivating my talent was not top of the list. I had to be creative in finding where and when to work, so I broke into – and painted in – bomb shelters. The neighbors complained and threw me and my paintings out many times, but I found my way back in. And thus working became entangled in my mind with a sense of urgency, isolation, autonomy; with naked walls, emptiness and danger.

Growing up in a small provincial town, I was starved for intellectual stimulation. I read a lot of books and watched art documentaries for hours on the only channel that broadcast them at the time. The programs focused on the great art masters – Goya, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Munch, Bacon and so on – and they usually didn’t go further than the mid-twentieth century, but for me these films were the big wide art world.

Later, I did some catching up on my own. I was an autodidact and I consumed pretty much everything I could find. In my early twenties, I felt a strong connection to German Expressionism. When I saw works by Kirchner, Nolde, Beckmann and Dix, I felt as if they had a direct line to my soul: the intensity of the colors, the brutality, the vulnerability and trauma.

Something of that has lingered and become a part of my artistic language. All my works, irrespective of the medium (oil, watercolor, needlework or tapestry) are expressive, with intense color palettes. But it goes deeper than that. German Expressionism’s representation of the human experience is direct and honest. Humanity isn’t flattered, and there is no place for hygiene or politeness, no idealization of life or art. I believe deeply in these artistic values and try to act upon them and express them in my works.

Perhaps it is not surprising then that many of my works have a streak of morbidity and depict mummies and body parts. I have a great fondness for monsters and other hellish creatures, some of which have become constant companions and reappear in my work over the years. It isn’t something that I plan. Most of the time, the work gives birth to the idea and not the other way round. Maybe that is why it is hard for me to see my works as finished. I keep coming back to oil paintings, even after they have been exhibited, and often I paint a completely new painting on top of an old one. Many of my works are fleshy, with all their past trials hidden under the surface. I like it when a painting has arteries, veins and flesh that suggest the presence of inaccessible memories.

Following my formal art studies I left for Europe and ended up living and teaching for several years in Hamburg and Berlin. There, I was introduced to the work of contemporary painters such as Neo Rauch, Tal R, Cecily Brown, Nicole Eisenman, Daniel Richter, Jonathan Meese and Dana Schutz. Each of them has left a mark on my work, together with others that I haven’t named (the list is long).

 As well as art, nature has been my greatest passion and inspiration. I feel towards nature a pure and insatiable curiosity. In my works, it isn’t nice or pleasant; its beauty is too grand for that. It is a place with no mental leisure for culture, a place where I deal with my limitation as a cultured human being.

Nowadays, I live and work in my studio in the Central District of Israel. Because of my intensive work on tapestries in the last three years, there is wool everywhere: a treasure trove for my cats. The studio is isolated, quiet; the structure is improvised and nature is very dominant. It is perfect for my needs. My hunger for intellectual stimulation and sources of inspiration is still as prominent as when I was young – so I tend to gobble up everything I see while walking in the street. I read books on all sorts of subjects; see exhibitions; watch films and TV series. I am an avid fan, among other things, of horror and science fiction.

Solo Exhibitions

2023 Underground, The Israeli Opera, Tel Aviv
2022 The Book of Changes, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2021 Merik Lechner: The Book of Changes, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art
2019 You Are Alone, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2016 Interrogations, Uganda Bar, Tel Aviv
         Underground Water, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2013 - Niger River, Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv
2012 - SCHONZEIT, Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv
2011 - Garden&Hole, Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot Gallery
           Dead Spot, Hakatse Gallery, Nahariya, Israel
2010 - Shiver ,Tavi Dresdner Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2008 - Tsunami, Tavi Dresdner Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2007 - Solo Show, Fine Kunst Kruger, Hamburg, Germany
2007 - Swan Song, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
Isreal Museum, Jerusalem              
2006 - Alchemy of a Catastrophe, 14 Dioptren, Hamburg, Germany
2005 - Picnic in Bermuda II, Julie M. Gallery, Tel Aviv
2005 - Picnic in Bermuda, Christoph Grau / Agentur für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Hamburg, Germany
2004 - HoneyMoon, Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra Gallery
2003 - Waiters, Julie M. Gallery, Tel Aviv
2002 - Superstitious, Julie M. Gallery, Tel Aviv

Selected Group Exhibitions

2022 Out of the 2020's #1, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2021 Nevelot, Maya Gallery, Tel Aviv
         Counterbalance, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2020 The Tel Aviv Crafts and Design Biennale, Eretz Israel Museum, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv
2019 Good news! The Negev Museum of Art, Be'er Sheva
         Naked Soul: Chaïm Soutine and Israeli Art, Mishkan Museum of Art, Kibbutz Ein Harod
2018 Grete Wolf Krakauer: From Vienna to Jerusalem, Mishkan Museum of Art, Kibbutz Ein Harod
2017 From Thread to Sculpture, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
         Fresh From The Press – New Prints, Gottesman Etching Center, Kibbutz Kabri
         Craftsmanship in Art, City Gallery Kfar Saba
         The Group Show, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2016 Summer 2016, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
         Body of Work, Art Space TLV, Tel Aviv
2013 - Passive Aggressive Expressive, The University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
           XXL - Especially large Works, Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv
2012 - Toward the Surface, Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv
2009 - Wild Exaggeration; the Grotesque Body in Contemporary Art, Haifa Museum of Art
2005 - The New Hebrews, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany
2003 - First Portait, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, Israel
2002 - Focus on Painting, Haifa Museum of Art, Israel
2001 - Gallery collection exhibition , Julie M. Gallery, Tel Aviv
2000 - Peer Gallery – Hamidrasha, Tel Aviv
1999 - Land , Um El Fachem Gallery, Um El Fachem, Israel
1998 - Cabri – Place of Art, Kibbutz Cabri

Awards
2011 - Oscar Handler Prize on behalf of Lohamei Haghetaot Gallery
2004 - The Brukner-Netta Prize for Young Artists
2003 - Arbeitsstipendium der Stiftung Leube, Salzburg
2002 - The National Lottery Prize for Culture and Art
2001 - The Gordon Foundation Scholarship for Young Artists
1998 - The Sharet Foundation Scholarship for Young Artists

Collections
Contemporary Art Phoenix, Hamburg
Tel Aviv Art Museum
Private collections in Israel, USA & Germany