21.03.2024 – 11.05.2024
As a young man, Gitai lived through the 1973 Yom Kippur War as a member of an air rescue team that evacuated wounded soldiers from the combat zones of the Golan Heights.
The works in the exhibition show the artist’s examination of the fleeting nature of memory, the chaos of war and the effects on those who experience it. The series of War Requiem pastel drawings, named after Benjamin Britten’s musical composition of the same name from 1962, show expressive portraits in different, strong colours. They were drawn either on paper or on newspapers from 1973, which contained obituaries. They show Gitai’s first intuitive impressions after the war, when the artist obsessively drew faces to document and process the trauma and losses he had suffered.
The series of ceramics was created in 2023 and echoes the haunting portraits of that time. They represent a continuation of the graphic work and show carefully crafted faces, which are designed with coloured glazes, often in bold primary colours, but sometimes also in subtle colour gradients.
Together with the drawings shown in the exhibition, the War Requiem series is an impressive reminder of the human cost of war.
Amos Gitai – War Requiem
21.03.2024 – 11.05.2024
Villa Kast / Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
Mirabellplatz 2
5020 Salzburg
www.ropac.net
