Friday 29 June 2007

Anna Ticho's landscape drawings

I was in Israel - Jerusalem - this spring, meeting up for a holiday with my two longest friends, Irene and Katrin. Irene has been living in Jerusalem for a couple of years. On the first day, after I arrived to glorious sunshine in the morning, we went to the Anna Ticho house.

Its upstairs exhibition of Israel's most famous female artist is a branch of the Israel Museum. Anna Ticho and her husband moved to Jerusalem from Vienna in 1912 and lived in the building since the early 1920s. Ticho spent the following years producing a range of intricate drawings and prints of the landscape surrounding Jerusalem: barren hills, the Jerusalem Forest - some of them are sweeping lanscape views, other are much more intricate and detailed, such as these ones:

Anna Ticho, Horizon, 1968, Charcoal

Here, the horizon line is almost right at the top margin of the paper - and what we can see is a highly varied web of lines and markmaking - shaping and filling out the slope of the hills. The ridges, in the distance are far less defined and marked with blended charcoal.
I didn't take a note of the dimension, but it is fairly large-scale, about 60x70cm or so

And, the second one:

Anna Ticho, Tree Branches and Moon, 1964, Ink on paper

With much more defined lines that shape tree branches likes spider webs in front of a pale, eery moon, this ink drawing again if full of detail and intrigue.

Irene took these photos after I had already gone back home - many thanks! Also - Irene and Katrin - on the evening of my birthday: I had a great time with you two, am looking forward to the next time and would love to have a drink with you tomorrow :)

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