By Yair Shulevitz (March 31, 2022)

 

Joseph Hirsch and Osias Hofstatter were two great sketch artists who operated in the shadow of the mainstream scene in Israeli art. The dominance of abstract painting and conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s marginalized artists of their kind: they did not belong to any current or group in Israeli art, and each of them was a one-man school.

Between the works of Hirsch and Hofstatter there is a connection based on a mental - spiritual closeness, based on a relentless pursuit of the depth and spirit of things. This is an unmediated encounter with human pain, which includes suffering, distress, anxiety, horror, melancholy, despondency, and the presence of those present as the second thread in their works, thus constituting a source of identification and connection with a spectrum of situations and emotions familiar to us all.

* The translation brings the spirit of things.