Alfred ABERDAM (1894-1963), Horsemen
oil, panel
64 x 100 cm
signed on the reverse
Alfred Aberdam (1894 - 1963) painter associated with École de Paris; he began his studies in 1913-14 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. However, he interrupted them when called up to the Austrian army. Wounded in combat, he was taken prisoner by the Russians and spent time in camps in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk. In 1920 he returned to Lviv, and in 1921-22 took up painting studies at the Cracow Academy under T.Axentowicz, and in 1922-23 under A.Archipenko in Berlin. In 1923 he went to Paris, where he remained permanently. He was a semi-founder of the Group of Four (with Menkes, Weingart, Weissberg). He exhibited at the Paris Autumn Salon, Galerie Zak and Berheim-Jeune. He repeatedly showed his works at exhibitions in Poland - in Cracow, Warsaw, and Lvov. From 1933 he belonged to the Warsaw group of Modern Artists. After the war he continued to live in Paris and participated in exhibitions. In 1949 he was in Israel; he had solo exhibitions in Tel-Aviv and Haifa. He also exhibited in London. A retrospective exhibition of his works was held in 1970 in Geneva. The artist painted landscapes, still lifes and figural compositions - at first framed in compact, strong forms, and later soft, "disheveled" ones, turning to increasingly strong expression and, after 1950, even allusive abstraction.