From the Press Release:
Nira Lev, born in Haifa before the establishment of the State of Israel, cherishes the sights, tastes, and scents of her childhood. Her exhibition is a longing for a bygone era, for the old and beloved Land of Israel, filled with innocence and the joy of creation, with people content with little and happy for one another’s happiness. “In my dreams,” Lev says, “I walk through Hadar HaCarmel and arrive at Hillel Street 3, the house where I grew up, searching for little Nira, for my happy childhood. I look at the surrounding houses and remember the chatter of neighbors calling out to each other as they beat their rugs, balcony to balcony. I recall laundry day—the great celebration—when Jamila, the washerwoman, ruled over the bustling laundry in a huge pot, with the primus stove humming, and the scent of starch and cleanliness intoxicating my senses.” This is how Lev warmly and nostalgically describes her memories of childhood in Haifa.
Lev’s paintings intertwine realistic and imaginary memories, blending into a complex emotional, colorful, and structural narrative that may appear simple to the casual observer but is intricate and accompanied by the pains of creation. Her works embody an Israeli nostalgia of childhood memories, whether from Haifa or the kibbutz (Lev used to visit her grandparents and uncles at Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha during vacations). Her subjects are varied, each presenting a different dimension that connects with and adds to her other memories.
Her style is childlike, guided by an internal truth, indifferent to perspective, as she is uninterested in “correct” drawing. In one of her experiments, she painted a fish flying in the sky. “And suddenly, I realized that on the canvas, I can do anything I want,” she says. She pays great attention to details in her paintings, filling them with numerous objects.
Home and family hold a warm and nostalgic place in Lev’s art: a mother preparing delicious meatballs with a meat grinder in a kitchen brimming with produce; a family gathering around the icebox dripping onto the black-and-white tiled kitchen floor; a meal with gefilte fish that begins with bringing a live carp home, continues with it swimming in the bathtub, and ends with the “gefilte” served at a beautifully set table; or a celebration with family and friends on the rooftop open to the sky, with the radio playing in the background, cards on the table, and the mother serving watermelon slices and soda.
Lev also addresses the complexities of being a “second-generation” child in her memories: the gaze of sun-kissed native children at the second-generation children, perceived as peculiar; the disappointment from her young aunt, a Holocaust survivor, unable to part with a piece of floral silk fabric she received in a package from Uruguay; and other events that linger in her mind.
“The subjects I paint fall on me like rain, they overwhelm me,” says Lev. She has painted over 100 works and feels that at least another 100 await her. “The painting is within the canvas, waiting for me to bring it out. The colors dictate themselves, and the canvas decides what will be painted on it,” she concludes about her creative process.
Nira Lev, one of Israel’s prominent naïve artists, was born in Haifa in 1940. For sixteen years, she worked in the cultural department of the Haifa municipality. She studied art with painters Zvi Mairovich and Zeev Yeshkil and at the Gordon Academic College of Education in Haifa. Her work is influenced by the artist Frida Kahlo. Lev has participated in and exhibited in group exhibitions in galleries and museums in Israel, Russia, and Spain. Aside from this exhibition, she has held four solo exhibitions to date, in Jerusalem and Haifa.
