Ofer Lellouche

Biography

Lellouche was born in Tunisia in 1947. He studied mathematics and physics in Paris at Saint Louis College. In 1966, two months before he was scheduled to graduate, he ran away to Kibbutz Yehiam in Israel. In 1968, during his service in the Israel Defense Forces, he contracted hepatitis and began to paint while recovering. He began his formal art training at the Avni Institute of Art and Design in Tel Aviv under the abstract lyrical painter Yehezkiel Streichman.

He returned to Paris to study with the sculptor César Baldaccini (1921-1998) and earn a master's degree in literature with a thesis on Stéphane Mallarmé. In the late 1970s, he worked in video art and painted self-portraits. During the coming years, he drew and etched self-portraits, often in violent industrial colors.

In 1979, he produced several videos related to the subject of the mirror. In the early 1980s, he began painting landscapes in addition to self-portraits. His 1987 painting Figure in a Landscape" was exhibited at the 19th São Paulo Art Biennial.

In the early 1990s, Lellouche produced more than 600 etchings, illustrated Stéphane Mallarmé's poem, "Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard", and published the books "Panim" (faces) and "Ein Karem". He also produced large-format paintings, which he called the "Atelier César" in homage to his former teacher. In 1991, he returned to Paris and visited the location of César's studio, where he found some clay models on their bases and decided to make a series of works that would remind him of what he had seen. Since the late 1990s, he has been engaged primarily in sculpture and etching.