Avraham Azmon Israeli artist. Gouache & Oil on panel laid on cardboard “Two naked women” 

Signed in Hebrew lower right

Size: 35 x 27.8 cm. (13.7 x 10.9 inches)

Size with cardboard: 45.5 x 38.5 cm. (17.9 x 15.1 inches)

Light creasing to corners of cardboard.

Avraham Azmon (1917-2008) was born in Israel to a religious Yemenite family in a rather poor, hard working class
neighborhood of Tel-Aviv, on the border between Tel-Aviv and Jaffa, called
“Mahane Yoseph” (the camp of Joseph). Azmon’s father was a Hazzan whose function is to lead, in singing and reciting,
the prayers in the synagogue. Azmon’s formal education started with four years
of a Yemenite Talmud-Torah. Then he continued in the Tachkemoni
elementary school in Tel-Aviv, which
he finished around 1932.
After finishing school he found work as a locksmith
and did not follow his artistic tendencies which were discovered around this
time. His first period of serious painting was between the years 1934-1938 – in
that period he acquired experience in making frames for pictures – the
profession of which he made his living for the rest of his life. In the years
1937-38, he managed a small art gallery in Tel-Aviv – Yad Oman (the hand of the
artist) where he got acquainted with some of the young painters in Tel-Aviv of
those days.
Azmon was a self-taught painter and his resume does
not include any formal studies of art. His first subjects were drawn from his
immediate surroundings. For several years he painted his childhood neighborhood
Mahane Yoseph and its surroundings. Later on, his reservoir of subjects
expanded to other areas including still-life, and his style became more
abstract and fantastic.