Yona Lotan was an engineer and painter, born in Lithuania in 1926.
In 1936, his family immigrated to Israel (then under the British Mandate for Palestine) and settled in Tel Aviv.
In 1950, after completing his engineering studies at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Lotan enlisted in the Army and served as an engineer career as part of the Engineering Corps until 1961.

In the late 50s, he began to paint as an autodidact and outsider artist following an urge that he had long felt to express in painting and drawing the unease he felt, as he confronted life and the universe.
His one-man shows in Israel (1959) and Geneva (1960) were very successful and motivated him to leave his position in the army, sell all his belongings and move to Paris in 1960 in order to devote his life to painting.
Lotan lived in the Montmartre district for nine years.
There he became part of a group of Jewish Emigre artists who worked in Paris.
In the early 60th Lotan received compliments on his work from Bernard Durival, the French art historian and art critic and director of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
In 1965 Lotan won the Prize of Foreign Painting awarded by the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
After his long stay in Paris Lotan moved to Manhattan, New York, and in 1969 he came to Israel to set up his studio in Old Jaffa.
In 1983 he finally returned to Israel and settled in Old Jaffa until his death in 1998.

Lotan's oeuvre can divided into two main periods: the "Gray-Black", made under the influence of his childhood memories of the Holocaust in Poland, and the "Urban theme" in which he drew geometric-shaped cities characterized by vibrant, fresh and rich colorfulness.

Collections

Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musee National d'Art Modern, Paris
Musee Municipal d'Art Modern, Paris
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam
Petit Palais Museum of Modern Art, Geneva
Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Senatsverwaltung fur Wissenschaft und Kunst, Berlin.

Lotan’s works are in private collections in Israel, France, England, Brazil, Holland, Switzerland, Sweden, Greece, Spain, Italy, Mexico, USA and Canada.

One-Man Shows and Group Exhibitions

1959 Young Painters Exhibition, Tel-Aviv
1960 Katz Gallery, Tel-Aviv
         Oil painting and drawings, Nora Gallery, Jerusalem
         La Maison Juive, Geneve
1961 Exhibition of Israeli Artists, Tel-Aviv Art Museum
         A minor exhibition, Baron Edmond de Rothschild's residence, Paris
1962 Galerie Camille Renault, Paris
         Galerie Badan, Geneve
1963 Brook street, London
         Beth-El Art Center, Oak Ridge, USA
         Galerie Semiha Huber, Zurich
1964 Galerie Riquelme, Paris
         Galerie Badan, Geneve
1965 Nora Gallery, Jerusalem
         Prix Pour Peintre Etranger, Musee National d'Art Modern, Paris
         Velma Exposition Internationale, Juvisy-sur-Orge (Île-de-France)    
1966 Mendel Art Gallery, City Park, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada 
         Galerie Badan, Geneve 
         Velma Exposition Internationale, Juvisy-sur-Orge (Île-de-France
1967 Center Culturel France-Israel, Paris 
         Exposition des Paintres Solidaires avec Israel, Paris 
         Exposition des Contemporains Classiques et d'Avantgarde
         Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris 
1968 Galerie Badan, Geneve 
         Galerie de France, Paris
         Opening Exhibition, Yona Lotan’s residence, Old Jaffa
1969 Jeunes D'aujourd'hui, Paris
         Old Jaffa Gallery, Tel Aviv-Jaffa
1970 Dix Artistes Contemporains, Musee du Petit Palais, Geneve
         Modern Art Gallery, Caesarea, Israel 
1971 Old Jaffa Gallery, Tel Aviv-Jaffa
1972 The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
         Nora Gallery, Jerusalem
         Nottebohm, Hamburg, Germany
         De Ligny Art Gallery, Florida, USA 
1973 Contemporary Art - Saluting 25th Anniversary of Israel, Denver,   Colorado 
1975 Galerie Soleil Georges Bongers, Paris 
1976 Galerie Juana Mordot, Madrid   
         “Art Intime”, Musee du Petit Palais, Geneve
1977 “Art Intime”, Old Jaffa Gallery    
1981 Hammer Galleries, New York
1997 Yona Lotan Retrospective Exhibition, Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Selected Group Exhibitions

1961 Ecole de Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Paris
1962 Ecole de Paris, 1962, Galerie Charpentier, Paris
         Paris Exposition d'Automne, 1962
1963 Paris Exposition d'Automne 1963 
1965 Velma Exposition Internationale, Juvisy-sur-Orge (Île-de-France)
1968 Le 10ème salon des grands et jeunes d'aujourd'hui, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris
1969 10 artistes contemporains, Musee du Petit Palais, Geneva.

Additional Information:

Yona Lotan (Levinstein) was born in Lithuania in 1926 when it was still part of the Soviet Union. In 1936 his family immigrated to the Land of Israel and settled in Tel Aviv at 1 Zrubavel St. on the seashore and near Jaffa.
He finished his studies at the "Herzliya" gymnasium. In the period before the establishment of the state, Lotan was a member of the underground, and even enlisted in the Jewish guard brigade in the British police force.
In 1946 Lotan began studying engineering at the Technion in Haifa, and during this period he earned a living working as a porter in the port of Haifa.
During the War of Independence, he was forced to suspend his studies at the Technion since he enlisted and joined the fighting as part of the battles for Jerusalem. At the end of the war, he returned to his studies, and finished them in 1950. Upon graduation, he enlisted in the Israeli army, where he served as a road and building engineer within the Corps of Engineers.

In 1955 he married for the second time to Rina Ariel, a Hebrew teacher and translator. In 1959, due to a personal crisis, Lotan took ten days of leave from the army, and settled in an apartment given to him by a friend in Dizengoff Square, Tel Aviv. He bought black charcoal and paper and began to paint feverishly. A friend, who saw the paintings, convinced him to contact the Katz Gallery (a leading Tel Aviv Gallery at that time), and show them his works. The owner of the gallery examined the paintings and decided to give the permanent army man a chance by presenting an exhibition of his paintings.

Lotan received from the army a studio in old Jaffa, which was then ruined but romantic, and began to paint there.
At the same time, he began studying the basics of drawing and painting with Tova Richter-Rauch and later with the prominent Israeli artist Yehezkel Streichman.

In 1960 he took a leave of absence from his military service, and went on his first tour of Europe to get an impression of European art firsthand and to present a modest exhibition at the Jewish House in Geneva.

During the exhibition in Geneva, Lotan met Jerome Jacobson, a well-known American Jewish lawyer who specialized in international law, who came to a bar mitzvah held in the same building. Jacobson accidentally entered the exhibition, fell in love with Lotan's paintings, and became involved in promoting his success.

At the end of 1960 Lotan moved with his wife to the Montmartre district in Paris, where he painted and visited museums and exhibitions.
He met Gabriel Roth on the street, and he also got involved in Lotan's success. Roth took some of his works to the art critic Bernard Durival (who later wrote a comprehensive book about Lotan) who was then the deputy director of the Museum of Modern Art of Paris. Durival was very impressed by Lotan's paintings, to the point where he wrote a warm letter of recommendation for him, and purchased three of his works for the museum, one of which was even hung in the entrance hall of the museum.

In April 1961 Lotan was officially released from permanent service in the IDF with the rank of major and began painting as his main occupation.

When Jerome Jacobson heard about the purchase of the paintings by the Museum of Modern Art, he told Baron Edmond de Rothschild about it, and he decided to hold a small exhibition for Lotan in his private residence in Paris to which he invited the important collectors, critics and dealers of the city.
In addition, Rothschild decided to purchase a work by Lotan for his private collection, and to finance the purchase of one of the paintings purchased by the Museum of Modern Art.
Following this enormous success, Lotan held a series of solo exhibitions in major galleries in Paris and Geneva and was even chosen twice to exhibit as part of the Charpentier Gallery's annual "Ecole des Preis" exhibitions.

In 1965 Lotan won the Best Foreign Artist Award from the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris. In 1966, following his exhibition in London, one of the visitors to the exhibition made his castle in France available to him so that he could devote himself to painting there. When the Six Day War broke out, Lotan turned to the military attaché in Paris to enlist in the army, but the attaché convinced him to give it up since the war would end quickly.

In 1968, the Paris Municipal Museum of Modern Art also purchased a work by Lotan. In the same year, Lotan decided to return to Israel with his wife after seven years of living in Paris and live in a house he restored in Old Jaffa Artists Colony at 19 Mazal Aryeh Alley. Part of it was a home, part a studio and part an exhibition space that was inaugurated in 1969.

In 1971, the catalog of the Petit Palais Museum in Geneva, Switzerland was published, and in the catalog a whole page was dedicated to Lotan. Lotan was the only living artist to whom a page was dedicated in the catalog.

In 1978 his wife Rina passed away. In 1980 Lotan moved to New York City, where he worked in a workshop in Manhattan. During this period, he was extensively involved in the creation of colored lithographs. Copies of the lithograph "Peace" that he created during this period were purchased by Baron Rothschild, who sent them as an appreciation to those involved in achieving the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.

In 1983 Lotan finally returned to Israel and settled in Jaffa until the day of his death in 1998.

His work

Lotan started painting at a relatively late age. At the beginning of his activity, the subjects of his painting were sentimental, even romantic. He avoided referring to the strong Israeli sun, and instead painted the city in the evening and at night, with dark cafes, bars, dimly lit alleys and musicians shrouded in smoke. He painted the “other” Israel: dark, Mediterranean, crowded and popular.

Lotan painted in a light and lively line while displaying high drawing abilities, with an impressionistic effect and a combination of abstract components.
His paintings are full of stormy emotion and sensuality, but even if his paintings were full of people, his main preoccupation was precisely with the loneliness of the lone person against the tumultuous city. In his paintings there is a combination of the graphical and architectural elements that deal with constructing a composition and relationships between the elements of the painting.

The limited color palette that Lotan used, mainly black and white, creates a very gloomy feeling in the viewer even if the subject is positive. Lotan initially used mainly ink, and later switched to charcoal as well. At the same time, he painted in oil and gouache, but these paintings differ in their style from the ink and charcoal drawings.
His paintings are characterized by sharp contrasts between the black of the ink, charcoal and oil against the white and gray of the paper and canvas.
His oil paintings also look like a drawing with only few shades.
Lotan has many times succeeded in creating delicacy and even elegance in his paintings by inventing details and fine lines in ink, but on the other hand many of his oil paintings include thick and opaque layers of paint.

Towards the end of the sixties, more and more colors began to enter his paintings, and the bustling city took over the entire space of the painting, closing and hiding the horizon line and the sky. The paintings in this period are full of a dense grid of geometric shapes, blunt outlines of windows, buildings, and light poles that intertwine and penetrate each other while creating a depth of many dense layers of elements. Scattered among the abstract buildings is a mixture of heads and bodies that are also composed of geometric shapes, colliding and penetrating each other's domain, going nowhere.
Although the paintings of this period are full of primary colors and contrasts, the dense, crushing composition makes the viewer feel the suffocation that surrounds the little man against the huge city, which covers and buries him in a cloud of colors. And perhaps, the viewer can also get the opposite feeling, of great gaiety from the multitude of people happily filling the colorful volume. Probably every viewer will see these paintings in his way.

In the beginning of the 1970s Lotan was also engaged in cast metal sculpture. He sculpted upright and black human figures standing in dense groups, pushed together to form a sort of protective circle between them, sometimes around child figures trying to hide within the circle. The figures were spiky, not polished, on the verge of nebulousness, reminiscent of the hopelessness radiating from them of his paintings from the sixties.

About the connection between his work as an engineer and art, Lotan said: "The roads, which I was on for the needs of my work, would first turn into landscapes for me, and then into pictures. During the day I would work outside. At night I would paint from memory."

Bernard Durival, director of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris (Centre Pompidou), wrote about Yona Lotan: "I admire his art and I believe in his work. He has a lot to say, and he says it well, and one day he will be listened to as he deserves." Durival also called him "the Kafka of painting."

In a review of his exhibition in Paris, Michel Conil-Lacoste wrote in "Le Monde": "Everything here is centered on the sincerity of the vision, much more than the scope of the color scale or the effects of a brush."